Written by Sarah Kim, MD ENT Resident

This spring, our multidisciplinary team of the Northeast branch for Healing the Children —comprised of speech-language pathologists, facial plastic surgeons, nurses, anesthesiologists, administrators, and volunteers—embarked on the third annual mission to Mwanza, Tanzania. We served at Bugando Medical Center (BMC), a remarkable tertiary referral and teaching hospital on the shores of Lake Victoria. As the largest hospital in western Tanzania, BMC serves a population of roughly 13–15 million people across Tanzania’s Lake and Western Zones.

On arrival, the team was quickly embraced by the familiar faces of the hospital residents and staff who were essential in coordinating each patient’s clinic visit for the pre-operative screening day and serving as our translators as we sought to learn more about their medical history and discuss individualized surgical approach for a vast array of ailments. In a deeply humbling experience, we met with patients and their families who were brought to the clinic after suffering significant motor vehicle trauma leading to loss of limbs, and poorly healed tissue after multiple revision surgeries. We met with children with congenital facial clefts that were unable to receive prior workup or treatment, now with functional deficits such as vision loss. When hyena were attacking a patient and his friends, he stepped in to save his brother from a violent attack, and sustained devastating facial injuries.

With our operating room schedule outlined for the week, the Healing the Children team worked together meticulously to set up supplies generously donated for the trip. Three operating rooms were set aside for the surgeons this week, where we were joined by dozens of residents and medical students working in the hospital who have traveled from many countries around the world to train at this hospital center. On each bus ride to the hospital each morning, we held a team huddle led by the lead surgeon Dr. Dane Barrett where each group planned out the daily goals and actionable items. Come evening, we gathered for communal dinners at the Ryan’s Bay hotel. Over shared meals, we reflected on patient stories, clinical challenges, cultural insights, and personal growth.

On our final evening, BMC’s residents hosted an unforgettable lakeside celebration. Under the stars, we shared song and dance and in a beautiful gesture of gratitude, the residents had prepared for the volunteer team hand-sewn dresses for the women, while the men were gifted traditional wear—tokens of cultural pride and appreciation. Despite the long, arduous travel, the trip was richly rewarding and affirmed the power of cross-disciplinary teamwork in low-resource settings. We returned home not only with memories of challenging cases but with lifelong friendships, renewed purpose, and a deeper understanding of global health. In a hospital that handles a quarter-million outpatient visits annually and thousands of inpatients daily, our contributions—though small—were magnified by the hospital’s footprint.