Dr Belia Klaassen

Dr Belia Klaassen completed her medical degree at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. The following two years she did postgraduate training in tropical medicine, which included training in surgery, internal medicine, and gynecology/obstetrics. Then she completed a one-year postgraduate degree in general and family medicine, before departing to Tanzania in 1988. 
Here she worked in rural hospitals in the Morogoro area and coordinated primary health care programs for 10 years. Together with her 2 daughters and husband/colleague Dr Ype Smit, she moved to Dar es Salaam in 1997, where they founded the Columbia Africa, IST Clinic in its current form. Her particular areas of interest and expertise are obstetrics and gynecology, ultrasound imaging, pediatrics, ophthalmology, internal and tropical medicine. She also has experience in diving and high altitude medicine, and occasionally accompanies Kilimanjaro climbing trips for medical back up. As her old passion for remote rural health kept calling, she joined MSF (Médecins sans Frontieres) in a local hospital in the DRC for a nine-month period in 2020/2021. She is now back at the Columbia Africa, IST Clinic on a more part-time basis.