As part of the Victoria Lake Region Cranio-maxillofacial Project, the first Tanzanian surgeons have arrived in Madrid in June 2024 to begin advanced training in several European hospitals. Drs. Emmanuel Motega and Fidelis Mbunda have joined Hospital La Paz, under Prof. José Luis Cebrián, and Hospital Ramón y Cajal, under Prof. Julio Acero, for four months. They will then continue their training at the Queen Victoria Hospital in London with Prof. Aakshay Gulati for two more months, and finally, complete this period with Prof. Gosla Reddy in Hyderabad, India.

This milestone marks the beginning of a collaborative program between Bugando Medical Center in Mwanza and several European institutions, aimed at creating a multidisciplinary surgical unit in Tanzania.

For several decades, surgical missions in rural areas of low and middle-income countries (LMICs) have provided millions of patients with access to reconstructive surgeries in the cranio-maxillofacial region, who otherwise had no other options. However, this model of isolated and occasional care is clearly insufficient—and is now considered obsolete—partly because of the difficulty in offering comprehensive and continuous treatment to these patients, and partly due to the impossibility of treating many conditions that require substantial material and human resources, which are often scarce or nonexistent in these regions. Additionally, surgeries performed during mission trips are associated with high rates of complications and surgical sequelae.
Thus, although surgical missions remain justified when no other alternative exists, we are beginning to see a strategic advancement that involves developing local reference centers capable of providing comprehensive and interdisciplinary care by local specialists.
In rural Africa, basic healthcare services are scarce, with very limited access to general surgery and almost no access to cranio-maxillofacial surgery. Consequently, people with cranio-maxillofacial disorders suffer high rates of mortality, lifelong sequelae, and stigmatization due to untreated conditions. The main obstacles in low and middle-income countries are the lack of qualified surgeons, insufficient healthcare infrastructure, and economic constraints.
Recently, a group of European organizations and institutions launched the Victoria Lake Region Cranio-maxillofacial Project, a collaboration with Bugando Medical Center (BMC) in Mwanza, Tanzania, to establish a multidisciplinary cranio-maxillofacial unit that can provide essential care to the region’s population.
Bugando Medical Center is a regional tertiary referral center and university teaching hospital for the Lake and Western Zone of Tanzania, located along the shore of Lake Victoria in Mwanza City. It has over 950 beds and serves a catchment population of over 20 million people from eight neighboring regions. Bugando Medical Center also serves nearby countries such as Uganda, Burundi, Congo, Kenya, and Rwanda.
It is undoubtedly better to replace the short visits of expert surgeons performing mission surgeries with the development of a well-equipped local center with well-trained and qualified staff. For this purpose, it is essential to have a good exchange program with international organizations and universities. The future development of surgical services in sub-Saharan Africa depends heavily on the training of surgeons and anesthetists, and this is the area where international organizations can collaborate most effectively through financial and educational support, facilitating training opportunities through the contribution of teaching staff, exchanges with local universities, and scholarships for postgraduate studies in surgery at reference hospitals.
This advanced training program, now beginning for Drs. Motega and Mbunda, has been funded thanks to the generosity of the British NGO Future Faces, led by Prof. Tony Markus.

But this is a multi-partner project, which so far has the collaboration of the following organizations (and is open to new partners):

You are all welcome to join us in this promising project.


Fernando Garcia-Marin
Tony Markus