University partnership to address the shortage of healthcare professionals in Africa

Abstract

The shortage of qualified health professionals is a major obstacle to achieving better health outcomes in many parts of the world, particularly in Africa. The role of health science universities in addressing this shortage is to provide quality education and continuing professional development opportunities for the healthcare workforce. Academic institutions in Africa, however, are also short of faculty and especially under-resourced. We describe the initial phase of an institutional partnership between the Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS) and the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) centred on promoting medical education at MUHAS. The challenges facing the development of the partnership include the need: (1) for new funding mechanisms to provide long-term support for institutional partnerships, and (2) for institutional change at UCSF and MUHAS to recognize and support faculty activities that are important to the partnership. The growing interest in global health worldwide offers opportunities to explore new academic partnerships. It is important that their development and implementation be documented and evaluated as well as for lessons to be shared.

Keywords:

• Partnerships
• global health
• academic capacity building
• medical education

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank and acknowledge the numerous people who contributed to this effort, and without which the partnership would not exist, including: Ray Blind, Gilles Hickson, Helen Loeser, Susan Masters, Naboth Mbembati, Paul Ng'walali, Thomas Nyambo, Pat O'Sullivan, Jane Sayi, Chuck Smukler, Kevin Souza, and Edda Vuhahula. Some of the activities described were supported by a grant from the Centre for Disease Control in Tanzania to the Tanzanian National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR). We are grateful to NIMR Director Andrew Kitua and his staff for their support for this initiative.