On 1 March, Novo Nordisk’s CEO officially opened a new diabetes clinic at Muhimbili National Hospital in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania.
The new clinic will be staffed with several diabetes specialists in rotation and three nurses. It will also feature a medical laboratory, a foot clinic, and a Diabetes Information Centre which will train doctors, nurses, and people with diabetes from around the country. The clinic will serve as a ’centre of excellence’, where Tanzanians can be referred by general practitioners and receive overall diabetes care.

The clinic will provide diabetes care for 6,000 Tanzanians every year.

Thousands of Novo Nordisk employees in Denmark helped make the clinic possible, via donations on World Diabetes Day. In addition, at its annual Christmas party in December 2002, Novo Nordisk’s Dutch affiliate collected 24,290 euros for the foot clinic portion of the new Tanzanian centre of excellence. Other employee fundraising events for Tanzania initiatives are run in parallel by the World Diabetes Foundation.

The clinic is the latest outcome of Novo Nordisk’s World Partnership Project (WPP), which seeks ways and models to improve diabetes treatment in poor and developing countries. The WPP began its work in 2001 with an in-depth analysis of diabetes care in Bangladesh, Malaysia, Tanzania, Zambia, El Salvador and Costa Rica. Last year, this information was transformed into a model for sustainable diabetes care in developing countries.

This year, the WPP will focus on developing diabetes care partnerships in the six countries above, plus China and India. The new diabetes centre of excellence in Tanzania is one of these projects.

Novo Nordisk's LEAD initiative

Novo Nordisk's position on Access to Health