Arusha, Tanzania, is a city of nearly 800,000 citizens that lacks formalized prehospital care. Due to this, most of the pre-hospital care is left to officers in the traffic division of the Arusha Police Department. The goal of this project is to assist in the EMS and mental health education of the Arusha Police Department. The team will consist of Physicians, Physician Assistants, Residents, Social Workers, and EMS personnel who will be delivering the developed educational curriculum. The curriculum includes lectures, simulated scenarios, and case-based learning. Through this curriculum, we plan to help local physicians and law enforcement build a reliable emergency service staffed with providers capable of addressing physical and mental trauma.
The population that will benefit from this will be the local population of Arusha, Tanzania. Due to current healthcare and infrastructure limitations, prehospital trauma and mental health care is limited for nearly 800,000 people.
The expected impact is significant. With the implementation of this educational curriculum with the Arusha Police Department, the goal is to have the local population retain and implement what they learned and benefit the local population for years to come.
In Tanzania, fire fighters are also their EMS responders. The purpose of this trip was to provide EMS training to the fire fighters. We were able to train over 100 fire fighters from all across Tanzania. We were able to teach primary and secondary survey, Stop The Bleed, and splinting. This project was very successful, garnering the attention of the Tanzanian Health Ministry. Since the completion of this trip the fire fighters who participated are now teaching their collogues all across Tanzania and the Health Ministry is requesting a return trip next year to help train even more fire fighters regarding Trauma Assessment and Stop The Bleed.
