A Doctor's Quest: Teaching brain surgery in the bush

God complex? Neurosurgeons hear it all the time. And truth be told, if you spent 14 years in medical school for this, spent day after day doing life-and-death surgeries, been told over and over that your medical specialty is among the most difficult, lucrative and mysterious, wouldn't your brain swell a little, too? Read More

One Brain at a Time, part 2: Are medical missions doing more harm than good?

More than 500 groups around the world run upward of 6,000 short-term medical missions a year.

Most Tanzanians are farmers who live on less than $1 a day, and amid this poverty, tuberculosis, malaria and AIDS claim tens of thousands of lives a year. To reach villagers, Haydom Lutheran Hospital sends medical teams into the sun-baked African bush where they counsel patients and provide vaccinations. A doctor at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston saw this outreach program and modeled one in South Carolina after it. Read More

Hope amid the acacias: A neurosurgeon finds love in Africa and a new job in Charleston

Dilan Ellegala returns to the tiny bush town of Haydom in the summer of 2007, Tanzania's dry season, when the sun scorches the fields of maize and sunflowers, and the air fills with clouds of fine red dust. Ellegala greets the staff of Haydom Lutheran Hospital like old friends, including the medical technician, Emmanuel Mayegga, the man he trained to do brain surgery during his first visit the year before. Read More

A chorus of hope: Will a doctor's mission take hold here and in Africa?

Here's where ideas come from: Somewhere inside your brain, a signal shoots through a neuron at 200 mph toward a sac of molecules. Bam! When the signal hits that sac, it pushes the molecules out of the neuron, like a gust punching through an unlatched door. Read More

Doctor works with MUSC to improve heart care in Tanzania

Dr. Mohamed Janabi remembers that when he was a child in Tanzania, stores carried only one kind of chocolate. Now, when he enters a store in the east African nation with his children, he sees more brands than he can count. Read More

Tanzania’s troubles are many, but a group from South Carolina hopes to 'teach them forward'

Tanzania is a beautiful country of about 40 million people on the eastern side of Africa, south of Kenya. It has one of the world’s highest mortality rates. Average life expectancy hovers at about 50 years. Malaria and AIDS are the leading killers. Read More

Tanzanian doctor hopes to be one in (10) million

Mwanza, Tanzania – The United States has more than 4,000 neurosurgeons, about one for every 100,000 Americas. In Tanzania, a country of 45 million, Dr. Emmaneuel Vianumba can count all of the neurosurgeons on one hand, and maybe have a finger to spare. Read More

Tribal peace? Look here

Haydom, Tannzania – From the Congo to Sudan, Africa is rife with tribal conflicts. But here in this remote corner of Tanzania, a place not on some maps, tribes from across the continent have managed to coexist peacefully for generations. Read More

Village 'mamas' form catering company

Haika Nasmen and nine other village "mamas" decided to form a catering company called The Busara Group. To get it going, each woman contributed small sums to buy cups, plates and other equipment. Now, the women are hoping to expand their business even more with tents and trucks and cater events throughout the region. Read More

Full circle: Sweetgrass basket idea leads to African neck brace

HAYDOM, TANZANIA –It’s not easy to find a neck brace here in the middle of the Tanzanian bush, but a neurosurgeon from the Medical University of South Carolina had a thought: Maybe the village’s basket weavers could make them? Read More