About Us

Within the Canadian health care system there is an increasing awareness of the importance of generalism in rural practice, and furthermore the rural generalist’s unique needs from an educational and skills enhancement perspective. Some of these needs may be best met by being exposed to and participating in medical care in the developing world.

There are great opportunities for bidirectional learning between communities of practice in Canada and Zimbabwe. On the Zimbabwean side we have engagement with the Government (Ministry of Health and Foreign office), Medical Schools (UZ and NUST) and community partners working on social determinants of health. On the Canadian side there is increasing recognition of the value of generalism to the system as a whole here coupled with a significant proportion of physicians (>50% of rural physicians in BC) being International Medical Graduates.

Our intent is capacity building in both healthcare systems through the development of relationships and bidirectional learning opportunities leading to partnerships. Capacity building for this group has been presented to the group though 3 lenses, direct capacity building (as an individual e.g. skills transfer), contextual capacity building (supporting the team to do so e.g. input to health education), and longitudinal (laying the foundation for future groups, e.g. needs assessment).