Geir Pedersen, head of the Project Management Department at Norway’s Haukeland University Hospital, explains how staff at the Bergen hospital have worked closely with Zanzibar’s largest hospital for the past six years to improve healthcare services there, providing considerable expertise and input.
Geir Pedersen, head of the Project Management Department at Norway’s Haukeland University Hospital, and a member of Norwegian IFHE member organisation, Forum for Sykehus Tekniske Ledelse (FTSL), explains how staff at the Bergen hospital have worked closely with Zanzibar’s largest hospital for the past six years to improve healthcare services there, with the latest initiative being a project which has seen a new children’s hospital completed within the past year, and a new mental healthcare facility soon to be built.
Operated by Helse Bergen, Haukeland University Hospital (HUH) in Bergen is Norway’s second biggest acute hospital, with a site area of 230,000 m2, and some 1,200 beds. The hospital has collaborated closely with the Mnazi Mmoja Hospital (MMH) in Stone Town, Zanzibar, in various areas of medicine since 2011. MMH is the largest hospital on the island of Zanzibar, with 500 beds. It operates directly under the auspices of the Zanzibar Ministry of Health. As a semi-autonomous part of the United Republic of Tanzania, Zanzibar manages its own independent health services. MMH is a referral hospital that provides services for the Zanzibar and Pemba population of some 1.2 million people. The hospital also trains medical staff in a number of different disciplines.
The Department of International Collaboration (DIC) at HUH is responsible for coordinating international collaboration between the healthcare facilities at HUH and other hospitals overseas. In addition to having helped forge the close partnership with Zanzibar, staff from a number of disciplines at HUH are also working in tandem with university hospitals in South Africa, Ethiopia, Malawi, Nepal, and India. Over the years HUH has provided a continuous steam of nurses, doctors, and other healthcare personnel to MMH, and indeed a ‘Haukeland House’ has been built at the Zanzibar hospital’s College of Health Sciences to accommodate these staff, many of whom are on one-year contracts on the so-called ‘Spice Island’
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