Aga Khan Hospital - Mbeya, Tanzania

The four Aga Khan Primary Medical Centres (PMCs) are located in urban towns of Tanzania, namely Dodoma, Iringa, Mbeya, Morogoro and newly established Mwanza Medical Centre located in Mwanza City.

These centres are the first line of care and point of contact for the communities in which they operate. These centres are placed amidst populations with demanding health care needs, and where presently, quality primary health care services are very limited. The urban catchment population of these centres is upwards of 2.5 million people, and they are highly utilized, attending to approx. 200 to 250 outpatients daily.

These centres provide essential clinical services, meeting the needs of the populations they serve while offering the care necessary for a broad spectrum of conditions. These  

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include acute communicable diseases, chronic non-communicable diseases, women's health, referral of complicated cases, routine mother, newborn, and child health (MNCH) services, voluntary counselling and testing (VCT). Other essential services including clinical laboratory, pharmacy, X-ray, ECG, ultrasound, Echo cardiogram and treatment room for minor and major procedures.

Overall, these centres provide a network of high quality health care in Tanzania's urban centres, and are currently being upgraded to learning sites, which will provide a unique opportunity for training of health professionals.

These centres are playing a critical role on the development of AKHST integrated health systems all linked digitally using a hub and spoke model to increase access to services at a lower cost, higher quality and more efficient manner linking the various tiers of care in a unified continuum, ensuring accountability for care. Mwanza Medical Centre is serving as a referral site for Aga Khan OHCs and other Government facilities for different services and specialties. It’s offering key specialists services to patients at more accessible and closer to the community. The other 4 PMCS are linked with Aga Khan main tertiary hospital in Dar es Salaam. The unique model is forming a strong district health system for the regions and significantly impacting on reducing poor health indicators.

These centres have also been engaging with other development partners, including the Ministry of Health in the implementation of special projects through public private partnerships, to provide services, support health systems strengthening across the public health systems and building capacity.