About Us

CANECSA is the College of Anaesthesiologists of East, Central and Southern Africa. Constituent member countries are Eswatini, Kenya, Malawi, Namibia, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. CANECSA is an affiliate college of the East, Central and Southern Africa College of Health Sciences.

The idea of a College of Anaesthesia arising from the East, Central and Southern Africa Ministers was mooted at a meeting in Zimbabwe in 2008/2009.

CANECSA aims to advance education, standards, and research in Safe Anaesthesia and Critical Care for the people of East, Central, Southern Africa and beyond. The number of professionals in this field is very low compared to the region’s population and its burden of disease. Medical Schools offering MMed Anaesthesiology and Critical Care are few in number and cannot match the need at the current pace, hence the need to run a program that will supplement Medical Schools offering MMed Anaesthesiology and Critical Care are few in number and cannot the efforts and standardize care in the region.

Further to that, there is a need to make the training in the region of good and uniform quality as some institutions and countries are far ahead of others, while there were many who needed to be uplifted and the training and opportunities be improved; taking from examples in Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Tanzania, the training systems were different and needed to be unified.

The CANECSA Constitution is available here.

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