Co-authored by Shawna O’Hearn, Director, Global Health Office and Dr. John LeBlanc, Faculty Advisor, Global Health Office

Our team focused on two weeks of MicroResearch training with a diverse group of health professionals in Ifakara.

Graduation Arrives

The two week MicroResearch training program focused on key skills in developing a research proposal.  Some topics included

• grant proposal development and management
• avoid pitfalls in research
• research ethics
• research manuscript development
• avoid pitfalls in presentations including abstracts
• technical report writing
• knowledge translation and policy development
• time and resource management
• community engagement
• curriculum vitae development

The Workshop had two different groups of participants. Twelve students taking a Masters in Public Health  at the Catholic University of Health and Allied Sciences (CUHAS) (Bugando – Mwanza, Tanzania) and one coach were sponsored by the University of Calgary to participate in the MicroResearch Training Workshop. These participants were far from their home campus and housed at TTCIH for the workshop and were able to work on their proposals full time. This is the first time for this type of opportunity. In contrast, the other 26 participants were local to Ifakara and came from TTCIH, Ifakara Health Institute (IHI), St Francis University College of Health and Allied Science (SFUCHAS), and Saint Francis Designated District Hospital.

The students came from from a wide range of disciplines including professionals from medicine (paediatrics, orthopedics, surgery, family medicine), nursing, social workers, psychology, public health, library sciences, health research, laboratory medicine, biostatistics, computer science and engineering

The students were divided into 6 groups, two from CUHAS and four from Ifakara. Each group had 5 to 7 participants that included a range of professional disciplines. Many members had not met or worked with each other previously. The collaboration started with discussion of the research questions put forward by each member of the group. The research questions were based on their own experience and guided by the lecture: “How to develop a research question”. The group discussed the merits of each question and selected one to work on as their team project. A spokesperson for each group then presented the list of topics to the entire class and noted the one selected by the group and the rationale for its selection.

A distinguished panel of judges participated in deciding on the best presentation: Prof Cassian Margori, Principal of St Francis University College of Health and Allied Sciences;  Dr Senga Pemba, Director, Tanzanian Training Centre for International Health (Ifakara); and Dr Angelo Nyamtema, Medical Director, Saint Francis Designated District Hospital (Ifakara).

There were two awards: one for the two groups from CUHAS and one for the four groups from Ifakara.

Group Winner: CUHAS Group 1

Title: What should be done to increase male involvement in Reproductive and Child Heath Clinics in Kigoma Municipal?

Group Winner : Ifakara  Group 5

Title: Can the use of mobile phones improve antenatal clinic attendance?

The judges were impressed by the accomplishments from all six groups in the two weeks and by the care taken in the presentations. They recommended that all six groups proceed to develop full proposals for submission for a MicroResearch grant. They recommended that all review their question to refine further and then ensure that the objectives well matched the question. They noted that all six studies were important, relevant and well chosen.

Are you interested in getting involved?  Do you want to learn more about the partnership taking place in Tanzania?  Contact the Global Health Office

Co-authored by Shawna O’Hearn, Director, Global Health Office and Dr. John LeBlanc, Faculty Advisor, Global Health Office

Today is our 8 hour road trip to Ifakara. Using rope made from old rubber tires, our minivan driver, Majuto, packed 10 pieces of luggage in the back, on the roof and under our feet :(.  We were squished and traffic was intense.  We started on the main road out of Dar that takes one west to a T-junction.  To the north, the road proceeds to Moshi, Arusha and eventually, Kenya (have a look on Google Maps).  To the south, one proceeds through the Mikumi National Park to our destination Ifakara and then south to Mozambique.  We had to work our way through big truck convoys against oncoming traffic and vehicles trying to pass these truck.  This is, after all, one of the main arteries to southern Africa.  We drove through the Mikumi National Park; to the right and left of the highway we saw, in sequence, a wild turkey, a baboon, gazelles, elephants zebras, giraffes, buffalo and a herd of goats!  They were within a hundred metres of the road.  No predators except people with the most dangerous of weapons, the automobile.

The Road to Ifakara

The final 85km of a 420km journey was mostly a bumpy, dirt, narrow road.  Cheers could be heard as we saw the sign for the Tanzania Training Centre for International Health (TTCIH) and 6 miles through town, we reached our destination.  We had a warm welcome and were treated to a BBQ of chicken and beef.

1 October 2012

We awoke in Paradise!

The grounds at TTCIH

Accommodations in Ifakara

I was expecting a clean but functional, even austere setting with few amenities.  We were treated to a lovely institute with beautiful flora, clean white buildings surrounded by lush lawns and a small cafeteria.  We each have a large room with a double bed, a mosquito net, air conditioning, a fridge, a kettle and a television! Pickings are a little slim for those of us who don’t speak Swahili. The people are lovely and since Dalhousie has partnered with the Ifakara Institute for 10 years, the staff were eager to see us and hear updates on their friends. We started the day with a tour of the facilities by Dr. Senga Pemba (Director of the Training Institute).  There is a new clinical training centre which had models for demonstrating birth and newborn resuscitation as well as plastic models demonstrating human anatomy.

There are 4 Institutions here:

1. Tanzania Training Centre for International Health (TTCIH)
2. Ifakara Health Institute (IHI)
3. St. Francis Referral Hospital
4. St. Francis University College for Health & Allied Sciences (SFUCHAS)

By Dr John LeBlanc, September 2012

Final day in Dar-es-Salaam and what a day! Terrilyn and I went on a bicycle ride through Swahilitown (one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Dar). Our university-educated tour guide, Meja, started a company, Afri-Roots,  to promote the use of bicycles in Dar. He also offers 3-hour tours for wazungo (foreigners) for $40 to see what life is like for most Tanzanians living in Dar.

We first visited a market with hundreds of shoes on display sorted by type but not by size; one needs a lot of time to find a pair that both fits and looks nice. There were also many shops selling second hand clothes that had been beautifully washed and restored. We then went to a local coffee vendor. The vendor obtains raw beans from the Arusha-Mosha area, roasts them in a simple pot over a charcoal fire, pounds them with a pestle in a large wooden mortar and then makes the coffee Turkish style. We had that accompanied by a delicious amalgam of wheat, sugar and nuts, a home-made peanut brittle refreshingly less sweet than the commercial type. We continued to ride our bikes through back alleys and visited a traditional healer. She grew her herbs in a nearby garden and if she didn’t have the right herb, she’d write a prescription and send you to a traditional pharmacist!

The tour continued with a short visit to a home built in the traditional style of six large rooms (one for each wife and their respective children). The houses are made with coral walls and roofs of mango struts. Mango trees are no longer allowed to be used for building. We learned that people didn’t own their own houses; they had 99-year leases, which the government could revoke at will, and did, when they wanted to build something. This created insecurity in people’s minds and some difficult dislocations.

This neighbourhood raised money locally to build a bridge when the various levels of government were unable to provide the necessary funds.  We stopped for home-made chips in pilipili (chili) sauce in the local version of a fast food takeout. This consisted of five ladies chatting around a pot of boiling oil while one cut potatoes and put them in the pot.

Next stop was a local cinema with wooden benches, a 30” old-fashioned TV and a DVD player. They showed pirated Hollywood or Bollywood movies that were overdubbed by a Tanzanian who told the story while the scenes unfolded. This wasn’t true dubbing as, according to Meja, he didn’t speak Hindi and perhaps not even very good English.  Nevertheless, he was an excellent story teller and his overdubs were now distributed even to other East African companies.  People paid 200 shillings at these theatres rather than the 10,000 shillings one would pay in a regular theatre ($1 Can = 1500 shillings). We later passed a theatre with a satellite dish that was showing live football games.  These live shows cost 500 shillings and you can hear the cheering throughout the neighborhood!

We continued our bike journey through another market area where clothes were 1/3 to 1/4 as costly as the first market. Clothes were in large unsorted unwashed piles. The vendors from the other market bought many of their clothes here that they then cleaned, repaired and sold at 3-4x the price.

Returning to the hotel after an afternoon of cycling and learning about urban life in Dar es Salaam, we were greeted by Bob and Michele Bortolussi who had arrived from Uganda.  Cycling in Halifax will be hard to resist after this experience.

Has anyone else taken this bike ride in Dar?  Or had a similar experience that they would like to share with us about their cycling and learning about the local communities?