We are excited to offer an elective at the University Teaching Hospital (UTH) in Lusaka, Zambia. Each year, one to two senior neurology residents will be selected to travel to Zambia, with a departmentally-supported stipend, for a one-month clinical experience.
During this elective, residents will have the opportunity to see inpatient neurology consults, work in outpatient clinics, instruct medical students and care for patients on the inpatient neurology service with their Zambian neurology resident colleagues in Lusaka under the direct supervision of Deanna Saylor, MD, MHS.
Saylor is an assistant professor of neurology at Johns Hopkins University and specializes in neuro-immunology and neuro-infectious disease. She also is the program director for the first neurology post-graduate training program in Zambia at UTH.
Residents will be able to experience practicing medicine in another country with a significantly different population and health system infrastructure, within a resource-limited hospital. These patients suffer from a variety of disease processes rarely seen in the United States, including AIDS-defining illnesses such as tuberculosis meningitis, cryptococcal meningitis, and progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy, as well as endemic diseases such as neurocysticercosis and malaria.
Residents will learn to treat patients in an environment with more limited access to imaging and medications. They will also experience the strong bonds that Zambian patients and their families share, much like those of their patients in America.