Airway Management in Tanzania

In this video by Dr Arndt Melzer and Dr Riaz Aziz, we explore the experience of airway management at Bugando Medical Centre (BMC). The facility is located in the city of Mwanza, in Mwanza Region, along the southern shores of Lake Victoria in Tanzania.

The hospital has a 950 bed capacity, serves a population of 16 million people and attends around 300,000 patients each year. The surgical staff performs over 9,000 operations yearly and the obstetrics service handles over 3,800 births each year. Anaesthesia and Intensive Care are part of the diverse surgical and medical specialities and sub-specialities offered. BMC is a teaching hospital for the Lake and Western zones of the United Republic of Tanzania.

This is an example of how anaesthesia and airway management can safely be delivered in East Africa. We appreciate that all settings are different throughout he globe, but nonetheless some of the principles can be similar.

We would like to hear about your experience: Do you work or have worked in healthcare settings that are more poorly resourced? How did you ensure safety in these settings?

As you watched the video, which elements of the Airway Spider could you identify? Can you think of one change that you could make to your own workplace to make airway management safer?

We have now finished our review of airway management from a global perspective. In the next step we will be asking you to apply all the knowledge you have gained in the last 5 weeks as we work through a series of case studies.