Join us as we return with great joy to treat the Talibé children, work in villages and holy cities, and travel throughout central Senegal.

Senegal is a country of contrasts because in a single view you will see women laughing and dressed in lovely printed traditional dress and boubous riding in pony carts, businessmen and women stepping out of their Lexuses and entering high rise offices, overloaded trucks that are impossibly wide for the street, and the tin shacks that house the poor. Turn your head, and you will see goats tied on top of cars for a quick ride to their new homes, children laughing, running, and twirling wooden hoops, and dogs and ponies everywhere. Much of Senegal remains deeply patriarchal and traditional, but women now form a significant minority in the government, and education is on the rise.

Most of Senegal remains rural, with very limited education, almost no health care outside of the cities, and extreme poverty. One child in eleven dies before the age of five. More than 20% of children are malnourished, and malaria is a common cause of death. Burns are a daily fact of life in the village, where families cook food over open fires. This is where you will make a difference in this remarkable country.

On this special trip, IMR will focus our efforts on the Talibé children. In rural Senegal, the accepted way for children to have the honor of attending school is through the Talibé system. In the past, this system developed educated professionals in Senegal; today, the children, living in "daaras" or schools, are found more often on the street, begging, than in the classrooms.

The Talibé children live in dire conditions, sleeping on concrete floors with dozens of other boys. Many find refuge in their "daara" or school, with up to 100 boys being cared for by a single teacher. In order to attend school, the boys beg up to ten hours per day and are required to pay their teacher a daily fee. After begging all day, the children learn the Koran by rote; if they make a mistake in recitation, they are often severely beaten. By the time they are fifteen or sixteen years old, they are often abandoned to the streets. Join IMR as we return to treat the Talibé children with acute medical and dental care, health education, vaccinations, wound care, and love.

We will also treat many villagers on this trip. The patients you will see will have conditions ranging from rashes to joint pain, lymphatic filariasis to leptospirosis, schistosomiasis to GERD. Burns are common from the open cooking fires and serious wounds are normal occurrences in clinic each day. Working in the villages is very special and our patients will celebrate your visit. Are you a Dentist? We need you HERE! This is a place of suffering, where chewing sticks have done their damage and created teeth that are barely an exterior shell, with roots that scream with every bite a patient takes.

We see some of our sickest patients in Senegal. On our 2014 trip to Senegal, we treated more than 200 patients acutely ill with malaria in addition to those suffering from tinea, scabies, ear infections, urinary tract infections, respiratory infections, and sexually transmitted diseases. Your patients will be in the greatest need for medical and dental care. In 2018 we cared for more than 700 Talibe children and more than 1500 total patients. Health education will continue to make a difference to the health of the villages and the Talibé children.

Please join us for a very special opportunity to care for the most neglected of patients on this rewarding trip. You will have the opportunity to partner with many local physicians and an outstanding team of translators that have worked side-by-side with IMR for many years.

This is trip set apart by the variety of your experiences in Senegal. You will spend your nights in small hotels, with beautiful courtyards and excellent food.   Your transportation will be by bus and there will be hotels each night of your stay.

You will join your team members on a one day safari  - get ready to have some fun!  Zebras, rhinos, and wildebeest, giraffes, and more are all possible sightings along with monkeys and many kinds of antelopes.  This will certainly be a highlight of the trip! The real highlight, though, are the local physicians who work with our IMR team year after year after year.  Working with these fine young doctors is the heart of sustainability - for IMR and for Senegal.  We'll also be vaccinating our street children as we have for the past 10 years.  Joining us in the field in Senegal makes a difference.  Be The Good!!

You’re journeying halfway across the globe, have you considered extending your stay to visit some of Senegal’s top spots? Join International Medical Relief on an exclusive trip extension provided by our partner, Worldwide Navigators!

  • Explore the narrow streets Île de Gorée lined with pastel, French colonial buildings
  • Discover the House of Slaves — a museum and memorial to the Atlantic slave trade
  • Visit Lake Retba, or Lac Rose, a lake that lies north of the Cap Vert peninsula northeast of Dakar