University Teaching Hospital (Lusaka, Zambia)

Written by Hongyu Zhao, MD, PGY-2 and Qing Meng Zhang, MD, PGY-2 at Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara Internal Medicine Residency Program while on Global Health rotation at University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka, Zambia in January 2019

This was our first trip to Africa, and our first time doing global health. Needlessness to say, we were excited and looking forward to an enriching experience. After more than 20 hours of travel, we arrived at Lusaka International Airport at 3 a.m. on a Saturday. Instantly, greeted with a wave of tropical humidity and welcomed by a short wave of thunderstorm with an awe-strucking lightning show.

We both grew up in China and I spent a good amount of time in rural villages in China as children, but life in Lusaka was…

Written by Payvand Milani, MD, PGY-3 at Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara Internal Medicine Residency Program while on Global Health rotation at University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka, Zambia in February-March 2018

I feel so lucky to have had the opportunity to travel to “UTH”, or the University Teaching Hospital, in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, for a few weeks. It was my first time in Zambia, and Africa, for that matter. Exciting! UTH is a public hospital and is the largest in the country. It is considered the referral center for all other hospitals in the country and many of the country’s specialists work there. My goal for the trip was to develop a sense of what healthcare is like in Zambia, to learn how physicians operate in a resources-limited setting, and to explore the country/culture.

From SFO, I took a 16-hour flight to Dubai and another 7-hour flight to Lusaka. It was quite the journey, so I was relieved to arrive in the relatively small airport of Lusaka. I battled with jetlag the day I arrived and made it out to UTH the next day.

Just by walking around, it quickly becomes clear that…