Royal Victoria Teaching Hospital

Gambia's main health facility, the Royal Victoria Teaching Hospital not only offers emergency treatment, but also conducts tours of its complex of late-19th-century and modern buildings. This might indicate how wholly the country is devoted to and dependent upon the tourist dollar, or how ingenious even the health sector has to be in order to maintain public services.

A hospital visit might not sound like a seductive holiday idea, but the daily two-hour tours (free, though donations are welcome) are surprisingly interesting. They offer excellent explanations of the hospital's international teaching programmes and research projects into malaria and hepatitis, and a worthwhile, though painful, insight into the dire situation medical services face in The Gambia.