Volunteer Medicine & Healthcare Abroad in Senegal

Volunteering abroad on a Medicine & Healthcare placement with Teaching & Projects Abroad offers an excellent way to gain Medicine & Healthcare work experience combined with the chance to help people in some of the poorest medical institutions in the developing world. As a Medicine & Healthcare volunteer in Senegal you will have the opportunity to gain a wide range of medical and healthcare work experience in a variety of departments.

All Medicine & Healthcare volunteers in Senegal work in St Louis, in the second largest public hospital in the city. The hospital has been open since 2000.

The hospital employs two doctors and six nurses, so having a volunteer to assist is very useful for such a small team. All volunteers live within a 30-minute journey of the hospital.

Your Role as a Medicine & Healthcare Volunteer in Senegal

All Medicine & Healthcare volunteers in Senegal must have completed at least one year of medicine or healthcare related studies or training by the time they join this project. The hospital will tailor your placement to your level of experience and to your particular interests.

Volunteers on the medicine programme in Senegal also need a good level of French, most of the staff and patients do not speak English and it is important that you can understand and communicate in French while you are working in the hospital.

The hospital has two main departments - General Medicine and Maternity. Within General Medicine there is the opportunity to gain experience in ENT, Obstetrics, Paediatrics, Gynaecology, Microbiology, Pathology and Psychotherapy. Your supervisor at the hospital, the Head Doctor, will then assign you to work with the local staff within the different departments.

Facilities within the hospital are basic and treatments are sometimes not of the standard we would expect in the West. You should be prepared to see some shocking cases and try not to get emotionally involved with the patients. Your working hours will usually be decided on a weekly basis, as the hospital is open twenty four hours a day, however, you can usually arrange to have the weekends free.