Medizin-Freiwilligenprogramm in Tanzania – Arusha

Who this programme is for

This programme is open to qualified, registered doctors and nurses — and to registered midwives, clinical officers and other licensed healthcare professionals. You will need to be fully qualified and currently registered with your national regulator (the GMC or NMC in the UK, or the equivalent body in your country).

It is not a student elective. If you are a medical, nursing or pre-med student looking for an elective placement, our sister brand Med Trips runs programmes designed specifically for students, with the supervision and sign-off that university placements require.

About the programme

The Medical Volunteer Program in Arusha places qualified clinicians in hospitals in and around the city, in northern Tanzania. You will work alongside Tanzanian doctors and nurses across a busy caseload, and see conditions that are uncommon in high-resource systems — malaria and other tropical and infectious disease, late presentations, and a high volume of road traffic trauma, which is particularly common in Arusha.

Arusha sits below Mount Meru, and is the gateway to the northern safari circuit — the Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater, Tarangire and Lake Manyara are all within reach at the weekend.

How your department is allocated

This is the main thing to understand before you apply: you cannot choose your department in advance. Placements are allocated by the hospital, based on where they need clinical support during the weeks you are there, and on what your registration and experience allow you to do. The clinical leads make that decision on arrival, and rotations between departments are at their discretion.

We will always pass on your areas of interest, and in practice most participants do spend time in more than one department over a longer placement. But we will not promise you a specific ward, speciality or theatre list before you travel, and you should not book this programme expecting one.

Where you will be placed

Sample placement — St. Elizabeth Hospital, Arusha. Known locally as “Kwa Father Babu”, St. Elizabeth is in the Ngarenaro suburb and is one of the three largest hospitals in Arusha. As a Council Designated Hospital it acts as a referral centre for local dispensaries and health centres, and receives patients from other hospitals for services they do not provide. It offers both inpatient and outpatient care.

Departments there include outpatients and emergency medicine, internal medicine, the surgical ward, ophthalmology, paediatrics and neonatology, intensive care, theatre, obstetrics and gynaecology, physiotherapy, dental, radiology, pharmacy and the laboratory. This is a sample only — we work with several hospitals in and around Arusha and you may be placed at any of them.

Your role on placement

You will be paired with an experienced local supervisor. As a registered professional you will typically be involved in ward rounds, clinics and theatre, and may assist with procedures within your scope of practice and at your supervisor's discretion — wound care, observations, minor procedures and similar. Hands-on involvement is never guaranteed: it depends on your registration, your experience, the supervising clinician's judgement and the patient's consent.

When enough clinicians are on the programme at the same time, the local team also runs community outreach in surrounding villages, providing care to people with little access to health services. Outreach requires a minimum number of participants, so it cannot be guaranteed for any given week.