Historically, many surgeons and physicians from the United States take mission trips to developing nations in an effort to help as many people as possible in a relatively short period of time. Often when these surgeons leave, the local clinical staff are left without the material and intellectual resources required to take care of these patients, particularly as it relates to post-operative complications. In addition, these "blitz" surgical mission trips do little to educate local providers and build sustainable local surgical capacity for the future.

Dr. Neil Sheth and Penn Orthopaedics have developed a novel approach to addressing the global disparities in access to orthopaedic surgical care: a financially viable, sustainable, systems-level modification for orthopaedic surgery and musculoskeletal care in Tanzania. We propose to build an Orthopaedic Center of Excellence at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre (KCMC) in Moshi, Tanzania. The surgical center will be staffed on a two-week, rotating basis by surgical teams from Penn and 25 other partner institutions (e.g., Stanford, UCSF, and Columbia), ensuring year-round coverage for the local patient population.

In most developing nations, top notch healthcare is available only to the wealthiest in the population, those who can afford these services. The majority of the population - those who cannot afford care - have almost no access. Penn's model is based on the delivery of democratized musculoskeletal care, granting the same quality of care regardless of a persons ability to pay.

Penn's model represents a way to cross-pollinate with and educate the next generation of Orthopaedic surgeons in Central and East Africa. The primary premise of this Orthopaedic center of excellence is to be an educational training center which will allow patients to receive the most innovative methods of care locally, and raise the standard of care in Sub-Saharan Africa. Philanthropic support has the ability to have a tremendous impact on Penn's ability to provide access to surgical care for those who need it the most.