Alliance for Global Clinical Training (AGCT)
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Investigator: William Schecter, MD
Location(s): Tanzania
Description
Since 2012, the Alliance has partnered with the Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences / Muhimbili National Hospital (MUHAS/MNH) in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. MUHAS is the largest teaching institution in sub-Saharan Africa. MHN, a 1500 bed hospital, serves more than 5 million people in Dar Es Salaam and the surrounding area, and is the major referral center for the entire country.
In 2012, William Schecter, MD initiated a project to improve access to high quality surgical care in developing countries under the auspices of the Pacific Coast Surgical Association (PCSA)
That project grew into The Alliance for Global Clinical Training (AGCT), co-founded by Dr. Schecter and Paul Hofmann, Ph.Dand Douglas Grey, M.D., who, together, previously co-founded two non-profit organizations dedicated to improving health care delivery:
Operation Access (1992), which mobilizes medical volunteers in the United States to provide diagnostic and surgical procedures to low-income, uninsured patients at no cost.
MedShare West (2008), which gathers, sorts, and ships open unused medical supplies and used medical equipment from US hospitals to partner medical facilities in developing countries or with medical mission teams.
AGCT now includes volunteer surgical faculty and residents from US teaching hospitals, including UC San Francisco, UC Davis, and the Oregon Health and Science University, and Israeli teaching institutions who provide continuous educational support to their colleagues in Tanzania.