A wonderful project teaching ultrasound in Tanzania, organized by awe-inspiring 2nd year medical students from University of California at Irvine
I have just pretty much recovered from jet lag and my anti-malarial drug induced dysphoria (I will attest to the fact that Mefloquine does have side effects) and am excited to tell the story of a project that I got to be part of. In mid-July I got on a plane and flew to Kilimanjaro airport in Tanzania with 7 medical students from UC Irvine. UC Irvine's medical school is small and encourages its students, after their first year of training, to do interesting projects in the summer, before returning to immerse themselves in massive absorption of data and passing of standardized tests. I met some of these students while doing my mini-bedside ultrasound fellowship, when I acted as preceptor to a group who staffs a regular rural health clinic in Mexico. A project to teach ultrasound in Tanzania was in the planning and not-quite-sure-if-it-would-happen stage, and I signed on, in a not-quite-sure-I-was-coming kind of way. 5 months later I got off of a plane with medical students, took...