An American medical student's experience in global neurosurgery: both in their infancy

There are only three fully trained neurosurgeons to care for Tanzania's population of more than 41 million people. Madaktari was founded in 2006 to serve as a physician training partnership to establish more self-sufficient health care through education and training. Medical students play a valuable role in Madaktari as they are primarily responsible for collecting postneurosurgical outcome data on operations performed by Tanzanian physicians trained by our organization. In addition, medical students represent the future of global medicine. Thus, it is important to determine the extent that Madaktari has affected student interest in global health. Our purpose in this article is to explore one student's experience working in global neurosurgery while working with Madaktari. In addition we attempted to determine the effect Madaktari may play on the future medical careers of eight medical student volunteers. To determine that effect we conducted a six-question online survey of medical student volunteers. We received responses from four of our eight medical student volunteers, all of whom stated they had a good or excellent experience volunteering with Madaktari and that their experience further increased their desire to incorporate global health into their careers. After working with Madaktari nearly half of the medical student volunteers have pursued or will be pursuing year-long funded global health research during their medical school careers. Madaktari is not only pioneering a path toward increased and more independent neurosurgical capabilities in Tanzania, but it is also helping foster increased interest and participation among U.S. medical students in global neurosurgery.