With the rising demand for improved healthcare services in Africa due to having insufficient specialized personnels, access to modernized equipment and medical technology, countries including Tanzania are taking measures to bring costful treatments mainly found abroad closer to their citizens.

Even though there are private health facilities offering some of these expensive and highly skilled treatments, the need to have these treatments in government hospitals is a necessity.

Benjamin Mkapa Hospital in Dodoma is in the process of commencing bone marrow transplants and In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) for women in order to cut down on costs of sending patients abroad for such treatments.

The trailblazing academic hospital inside the University of Dodoma with the latest versions of MRI and CT Scan has been operating for six years since October 2015 and is set to become the first hospital in the East African region to offer bone marrow transplant.

Through the modernized equipment and technology, skilled personnel and partnerships, the hospital has been able to provide specialist services that were previously not available in the country including kidney transplantation, operating on hearts through chest incision rather than opening the chest cavity.

“Since we acquired this technology we have also started offering pacemaker treatment,” the hospital’s Executive Director, Dr. Alphonce Chandika told The Citizen

The hospital needs extra €135 million to add to the €25 that Italy has agreed to provide, making a total of €160 million needed to commence the treatments.

Other African countries offering bone marrow transplants includes; Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa and Tunisia.