A medical project in an African village

The authors led a group of 15 students on a medical project to a remote traditional village in Sierra Leone, West Africa. The team lived in the village for one month. They staffed an outpatient clinic, performed a community health survey, and organized an immunization project and a health education program. This project offered a unique opportunity to teach many aspects of primary care, including clinical skills, use of health education, practice of preventive medicine, methods of community epidemiology, and the relationship of health to sociocultural factors. By living in the community, seeing the overwhelming health problems in the clinic, and working in the community to improve health, the students had a provocative and educational primary health care experience. Family medicine teachers are well suited for leading international medical projects.