Students Assess Quality of Health Care Facilities in Tanzania

This past summer, four Harvard students traveled to Tanzania to work with the private medical sector and propose ways to improve the quality of health care offered.

Rachel B. Bervell ’13, Byran Dai ’11, Anita J. Joseph ’12, and Peggy Su ’13 spent eight weeks in Tanzania working with the Association for Private Health Care Facilities.

The Association was founded in August 1994 to provide a forum for the discussion of different aspects of the nation’s private health care sector.

According to their website, the main objective of the organization is “to promote by all possible means and at all times the attainment of the highest possible physical and mental wellbeing of all people in Tanzania.”

Su said the students were unsure what project they needed to pursue upon arriving in Tanzania, but were inspired after shadowing a quality improvement officer to inspect and approve facilities.

“Health care needs are pretty different, so we created a quality assessment template which is nine categories long,” Su said. “It’s ways for health facilities to improve the quality of their care regardless of their size.”

The students worked with three types of facilities and created a template in which they would assess what the facilities had and what they needed.

These observations would then be used to compile a consulting report.

“The most important part of our project was that we gave them recommendations that didn’t cost any money,” she said. “They typically expect foreigners to tell them to do something that requires a lot of money.”

“Giving them ideas that are at low or no cost is an additional incentive to help have these recommendations come to fruition.”

The students became involved with the Association for Private Health Facilities in Tanzania through the Harvard Undergraduate Global Health Forum.

They visited 23 hospitals during their stay and offered recommendations for 19 facilities.

—Staff writer Barbara B. DePena can be reached at barbara.b.depena@fas.harvard.edu.