Overcoming Barriers to Oral Health Care Access in Tanzania

Katanta Simwanza, DDS, knows what it’s like to not have access to oral health care. 

“Growing up, I was surrounded by a high prevalence of dental diseases within my community where oral health services were scarce,” Simwanza says. “I, and many other children and elders alike, personally experienced the pain of dental abscesses and oral health diseases.” 

These experiences growing up in Tanzania pointed him toward pursuing a career in health — specifically oral health. 

“I was also greatly influenced by my uncle who was a doctor himself and had used his profession to make people’s lives better,” Simwanza says. “I wanted to emulate that.” 

Simwanza has now made it his mission to help people in his country access oral health care — as a development and public health specialist with more than 15 years of experience in dentistry. He has added the position of MC-Tanzania country manager for MCW Global (Miracle Corners of the World) to his list of accomplishments and is the first dentist to have this title in MCW’s history. Serving in that role, he met CareQuest Institute President and CEO Myechia Minter-Jordan, MD, MBA, in November 2023 at a conference aimed at creating and implementing oral health strategies in the World Health Organization (WHO) Africa Region. 

The two discussed how Simwanza makes use of global resources to help improve oral health in his country. 

“CareQuest Institute, I would say, is a great resource,” he said to Minter-Jordan at the conference. Simwanza highlighted CareQuest Institute’s webinars, reports, and white papers “as a source of information if I want to learn something around oral health. In particular, I’m so interested with medical-dental integration, as well as integrated care.” 

(See the full interview in the video on the right.) 

The primary goal of the conference — “Exploring Global Strategies To Promote Oral Health in the WHO African Region” — was to accelerate oral health policies using evidence-informed strategies and propose actionable recommendations. More than 70 delegates from 24 countries of the WHO African Region attended. 

Simwanza is working to strengthen MCW’s relationship with government officials and work with leaders from many of those countries to provide oral health care services for people in Tanzania. He also plans to collaborate with other organizations to form a group that will help implement medical-dental integration in the country. 

“The country’s policies need to be more supportive of oral health services,” he says. “For example, Tanzania currently has no updated country oral health strategic plan.” 

A Shortage of Providers, a Need for Knowledge About Integration

Simwanza says people in Tanzania face many barriers to accessing care. One is the shortage of dentists. The current ratio of dentists to people in Tanzania is 1 dentist for every 125,000 people, while the WHO recommends 1 dentist for every 75,000 people. He says another barrier is that oral health is a low priority to stakeholders in the system, so there are no school-based health programs or outreach programs. Additionally, many people in Tanzania don’t know a lot about oral health and the importance of it, especially its link to overall health. 

MC-Tanzania is currently working on two projects: the Community Health Fellowship Program and the Dental Therapist Outreach Training Program. Both programs aim to empower communities with education and information on oral health care and train dental therapists to provide preventive services for their community. Dental therapists provide preventive and restorative dental care, including exams, filling cavities, educating patients about oral health, cleaning teeth, placing temporary crowns, and performing extractions. 

In the future, Simwanza says he hopes to see more investments made into training oral health care providers, since there is such a shortage in the area. He also wants to strengthen MC-Tanzania’s relationship with the government to help them develop and review policies, guidelines, and a strategic plan for oral health care.