Bugando Medical Centre


Bugando Medical Centre is a tertiary care medical facility owned by the Episcopal Conference of the Catholic Bishops of Tanzania. The hospital is operated in collaboration with the Tanzania Ministry of Health and Social Welfare.

Location

The facility is located in the city of Mwanza, in Mwanza Region, along the southern shores of Lake Victoria. This is approximately, by road, north-west of Dar es Salaam, the financial capital and largest city in the country. The geographical coordinates of the hospital are: 2°31'41.0"S, 32°54'27.0"E.

Overview

BMC is a tertiary referral, research, teaching center and cancer treatment hospital affiliated with the Catholic University of Health and Allied Sciences. BMC's inpatient bed capacity is 950, spanning a wide range of medical and surgical specialties. The hospital employs over 1,300 staff.
In Tanzania, an estimated 35,000 new cases of cancer were diagnosed in 2014, of whom about 21,000 died that same year. The country has only two cancer hospitals, the main one, Ocean Road Cancer Institute, is located in the financial capital, Dar es Salaam. The cancer unit at Bugando Medical Centre is the second and only other public cancer treatment centre to cater for the estimated 58 million Tanzania's citizens.

History

This hospital was built by the Catholic Church between 1968 and 1977. It was officially opened on 3 November 1971, by Tanzania's founding president, Julius Nyerere. In 1972 the Hospital was nationalized by the Government. However, 13 years later, it was handed back to the Catholic Church in Tanzania, with the understanding that the hospital be run as a regional referral hospital for the Lake Zone, spanning 8 of Tanzania's 31 regions, with the collaboration of the Government of Tanzania.

Services

As of 2017, BMC offered specialist services in the following clinical areas: