This time last week our two week outreach and training programme was coming to a close and it was an honour to have Dr Baraka Nzobo, Assistant Director of Oral Health Services, with us to present the Dental Therapists (DT’s) with their completion certificates.
Many of you will have heard us talk about Dr Nzobo over the last few years as the programme we run now, with the primary aim of training Tanzanian Dental Therapists in the expanded skills that have been added to their scope of practice, was his vision. It was he that introduced us to the team at the Tanzanian Health, Environment, and Development Initiatives (THEDI) a local NGO and from there a partnership was born. Over the last few years, this partnership has become one of the most important in Bridge2Aid’s history and we couldn’t be happier as we continue to work alongside them.
You see, the programmes now aren’t solely ours, if anything we’re but a small cog in the machine. These are THEDI led programmes which we support with guidance, when asked for, and by bringing volunteers from the UK to work and teach alongside Tanzanian Dentists and team members. We’re there by invitation, Dr Nzobo knows when we are coming to his country, the president of the Tanzanian Dental Association, Dr Gemma Berege, knows when we’ll be there and, most importantly, our volunteer dentists must take out temporary registration with the Medical Council of Tanganyika.
Working with a locally led team means that when we arrive our team can get straight to work, in fact we’re often, a little embarrassingly, the last to arrive. The set-up and pre-programme workload is huge ;
- Awareness campaigns in the local villages in the weeks leading up to the programme
- Screening of school children by local Dental Therapists
- Arranging transport for our Tanzanian team, dental colleagues, Dental Therapists and UK volunteers.
- Finding facilities and liaising with the in-charge Medical Officers to allow us to use their property
- Organising catering – everyone works incredibly hard and needs to be well fed and watered to sustain them
- Turning spaces into functional dental treatment rooms using portable dental chairs and equipment
- Temporarily employing local people to
- Pack, upload, un-pack and set-up equipment.
- To clean shared areas throughout the day as we work and to help with decontamination
- To set up huge shelters so that our patients don’t have to sit out in the blazing hot sun as they wait to be seen
- Register patients as they arrive
- Play music to keep people waiting entertained – are you even in Tanzania if there’s no music?
We’re often asked if we take equipment or materials out with us, the answer is that we try not to, unless asked to bring something specific. Our view is that anything that the Dental Therapists are using should be able to be purchased in-country, it needs to be readily available and accessible to them. It’s why every morning, often to the surprise and raised eyebrows of our UK volunteers, one of the first tasks is to mix adrenaline from an ampule into a bottle of lignocaine and draw up syringes of anaesthetic. This is what is most freely available and most cost effective for our Tanzanian colleagues.
Collaborative Training
The primary objective for our volunteer dentists is to help build capacity through expanding the skill-set of local Dental Therapists (who make up the majority of the Tanzanian dental workforce). This isn’t done in isolation, it’s never a ‘them and us’ situation. Our volunteers work alongside Tanzanian Dentists to share their skills with each other, in turn passing them onto the DT’s.
I felt very positive and encouraged being trained by both Tanzanian and UK dentists. The Tanzanian dentists helped me understand the procedures in a way that was relevant to our local working environment and the resources available to us. The UK dentists also brought different experiences, techniques and approaches that helped me learn new ways of carrying out various procedures.
I appreciated the opportunity to learn from both, as the combination of local knowledge and international experience made the training more valuable. It also gave me confidence to improve my skills, ask questions and apply what I learned in my daily work as a Dental Therapist
Z.K, October 2026
For us, this is what partnership is all about. It’s about listening, respecting local knowledge and working together to achieve something that benefits everyone. Our UK volunteers bring their own experience and ideas, but they learn just as much from the Tanzanian dentists and Dental Therapists they work alongside. By combining international experience with local knowledge, the training becomes relevant, practical and, most importantly, useful in the environment in which the Dental Therapists work every day. We’re incredibly proud to support THEDI and our Tanzanian colleagues, but the real achievement belongs to the Dental Therapists who take these expanded skills back to their communities and continue to make a difference long after we’ve gone home.
Annie Barrow
Programme Manager
