Journalists experience corporate citizenship in action in Tanzania
Fifteen journalists from around the globe took part in a two-day trip to Ifakara in Tanzania, home to several projects of the Novartis Foundation for Sustainable Development. This was a unique opportunity to enable them to experience what corporate citizenship means to Novartis.
October 27, 2005 - During their stay in Ifakara, Tanzania, fifteen journalists visited the Ifakara Training Center for International Health and got acquainted with the initiatives of the Novartis Foundation for Sustainable Development (NFSD) to improve access to malaria and tuberculosis treatment.
Many public health training institutions in developing countries suffer from poor management and lack of resources. Against the background of scarce public resources, new ways have to be found to help public training institutions to achieve their goal. The NFSD has been undertaking such an effort in Ifakara, together with the Tanzanian Ministry of Health, the Swiss Tropical Institute and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.
The Novartis Foundation is working with the Tanzanian government to provide high-quality healthcare training facilities in Ifakara. This contributes to an improvement in medical and health-related training and is meant to enhance the quality of the health services for poor segments of the population, especially in rural areas.
The NFSD also supports Tanzania in its fight against tuberculosis (TB) through a joint project aimed at enhancing access to TB treatment in three districts of the country by providing patient-centered treatment. The basis for this project is the Novartis TB drug donation to Tanzania in collaboration with the WHO’s Global Drug Facility.
Our partnership with the WHO to provide medicines to patients in the developing world afflicted with tuberculosis, leprosy or malaria is only the first step. Without high quality health services, many patients will neither be diagnosed correctly nor treated effectively. This is why training institutions for health professionals on all levels are so important. We are very happy with the progress that has been made in Ifakara and we will continue to support the training center as long as it is needed”, explained Prof. Dr. Klaus Leisinger, President and CEO of the Novartis Foundation for Sustainable Development.
Since 1961, around 1700 health workers, medical students and doctors have been trained at the center. These healthcare professionals have benefited from the proximity of the Ifakara Health Research and Development Center. Through the work of the Ifakara Health Research and Development Center and its Demographic Surveillance System Unit, the district of Kilombero is one of the best-researched regions in Africa in the area of public health. The results of this research form the basis for health intervention programs and are integrated into the training courses offered by the Health Training Center. In addition, the students benefit from the proximity of the St. Francis Designated District Hospital: a close link between theory in the classroom and practice in the hospital helps students to be well-prepared for their task in prevention work and in the diagnosis and treatment of patients, especially in rural districts.
Nowadays, the Center does not only offer training for national and sub-regional health professionals, but also international short courses that allow the Center to generate income and thus to finance competent training staff as well as facilities of good quality.
During the trip, the journalists also visited the Ifakara Training Center and the Demographic Surveillance System Unit – a unit with which the Novartis Foundation is working to establish benchmarks in order to measure the impact of its projects and programs. The ministerial and project staff highlighted several ongoing health intervention initiatives such as a successful program to understand and improve access to effective malaria treatment in rural Tanzania. Finally, the journalists visited local health centers where patients with TB, leprosy and malaria are being treated.