Weill Bugando School of Medicine Celebrates 20th Anniversary

On November 11, 2023, the Weill Bugando School of Medicine in Mwanza, Tanzania celebrated their 20th anniversary of operation. Since its founding in 2003, the school has graduated over 2,000 MD students.

At the time of the school’s inception, Tanzania had only 1 physician per 50,000 people, the lowest ratio in the world. Furthermore, most of these physicians were concentrated in the eastern capital city of Dar es Salaam. In the northwestern region, where CUHAS-Weill Bugando is located, there were only 16 trained physicians to serve the population of 15 million. Thus, local community, religious, and medical leaders came together to create an institution that would build medical capacity in their region.

The relationship between Weill Cornell and the Bugando Medical Center began when Dr. Peter LeJacq, an alumnus of Weill Cornell and Maryknoll priest, commenced his work as a physician in Mwanza in 1993 and was asked to assist with fundraising for the new medical school. As the medical school was developed, he played a pivotal role in forming important partnerships with institutions in the United States, including Weill Cornell Medical College in 2003. The medical school at CUHAS, which also houses schools of nursing, pharmacy, and laboratory science, was later renamed in 2007 in recognition of the benefactor Sanford I. Weill, Chair of the Board of Overseers at Weill Cornell in New York, to become the Weill Bugando School of Medicine.

The launch of Weill Bugando in Mwanza is a testament to the vision of Tanzanian leadership and a model of international collaboration. An outstanding team of young Tanzanian physicians with graduate degrees in basic sciences were hired to serve as the initial Weill Bugando faculty. Before beginning their instruction of the first medical school class, they traveled to Weill Cornell Medicine (WCM) in New York in 2002 to learn from the WCM basic medical science courses and develop their own curricula for Tanzania. When classes began in Tanzania in 2003, WCM faculty traveled to Mwanza to assist with course implementation and teaching. In 2005, when clinical clerkships began for the Weill Bugando students, WCM clinical faculty and senior residents started rotations at Weill Bugando to provide additional clinical teaching support to the Tanzanian faculty physicians from Weill Bugando. The following year, Dr. Robert Peck joined WCM’s faculty to coordinate WCM’s clinical training in Mwanza WCM and Weill Bugando have had a strong clinical and research partnership ever since. WCM faculty have even served as faculty mentors for CUHAS-Weill Bugando PhD students, offering “sandwich” programs that promote international research collaboration.

For example, among the most recent Weill Bugando graduating class were Drs. Bazil Kavishe and Brenda Kitilya, whose PhD training was supported by WCM and the NIH Fogarty International Center. Dr. Kavishe now serves as the local PI for an NIH-sponsored cluster randomized trial entitled “Engaging Religious Leaders to Reduce Hypertension” led by co-principal investigators Drs. Jennifer Downs and Robert Peck. Dr. Brenda Kitilya’s PhD work was centered around physical activity, cardiorespiratory fitness, and diabetes among people living with HIV in Tanzania. Her research emphasizes the importance of physical activity in people with HIV to reduce their risk of diabetes.

Weill Bugando’s first 20 years have been a resounding success. More physicians than ever are serving the northwestern Tanzania region, providing their communities with essential, life-saving and compassionate care Research partnerships with WCM and other international institutions have elevated care quality and access. Cheers to another 20 years!

Article by Emily Gitlin