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Shoulder to Shoulder -
Works
both in Minnesota and in Tanzania to support and upgrade
Lutheran medical
facilities in the Iringa Diocese of the Evangelical Lutheran
Church in Tanzania. |
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History: “If they want to treat my people, let them
treat my donkey first.”
The first Christian healthcare work in what is now
the Iringa Diocese of Tanzania began in 1938 when a
Swedish nurse arrived at Ilula and set up a tent to
serve as a health post. Chongoma, the local chief,
refused to allow his people use the modern facility.
As time elapsed, the nurse began to lose hope of
ever being able to reach out to the people she
wished to serve. Then one day the chief’s donkey
developed a large abscess on its leg. Chief
Chongoma brought the animal to the nurse, commenting
to his people, “If they want to treat my people,
let them treat my donkey first.”
With hesitation and fear, the nurse opened the
abscess, drained the pus, and packed the wound with
medicine, advising the chief to bring his donkey for
daily dressing changes in the following days. After
a few days the donkey was fully recovered, and Chief
Chongoma convened a public meeting where he ordered
his people to go to the nurse’s tent for all their
health problems. Many came, most were cured, and
many more came.
The Ilula Lutheran Health Center has grown from its
humble beginnings to its present status as a 70-bed
facility situated along a busy highway in a growing
town, serving a catchment area of over 100,000
people in a mostly poor and rural area of Tanzania.
The Tanzania-Zambia Highway goes through Ilula about
450 km west of Dar es Salaam and about 50 km east of
Iringa. The rapid urbanization of the area in
recent years has led to an alarming increase in the
number of communicable diseases, including AIDS and
tuberculosis.
Current Facilities
Officially the Ilula Lutheran Health
Center is registered as having 70 beds: 10 for
private patients, 20 in the maternity ward, and 40
for general patients.
The Ilula Health Center is operated by the Iringa
Diocese of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in
Tanzania (ELCT). The Diocese also operates eight
rural dispensaries (small clinics that serve several
villages and are staffed by a clinical officer, with
training roughly equivalent to that of a nurse
practitioner). The health center receives some
government funding in the form of staffing grants.
The Ilula campus includes an administration
building, a building which houses outpatient
services, a maternal/child health clinic with
delivery room and maternity ward, a private ward, a
general ward with a wing housing the infectious
disease ward, and a laboratory building. Outlying
buildings include kitchen facilities, laundry, and a
workshop.
Current staffing includes two medical doctors,
several clinical officers, nurses with varying
levels of training, nine nurse midwives, lab
assistants, and various administrators and
accountants.
Becoming a District Designated
Hospital
The Tanzanian government has
expressed its willingness to designate the Ilula
Lutheran Health Center as the district hospital for
the new Kilolo district—and that designation would
bring valuable staff and financial support to the
facility.
Status as a District Designated Hospital requires
the health center to upgrade its facilities in a
number of ways. At a minimum, it would have to add
a surgical suite complete with anesthesiology
capabilities; improve its inpatient laboratory
technology; add imaging capabilities such as x-ray
and ultrasound; and build a morgue. In addition, a
district hospital would be expected to have more
beds
and patient wards, and a greater variety of
specialists such as surgeons, anesthesiologists,
obstetricians, and perhaps dentists.
Two Task Forces at Work
A task force in Tanzania is working
with architects, builders, and government health
officials to plan an orderly expansion. A task
force in Minnesota is working to raise funds and to
provide expertise for long range planning. The new
in-patient lab, our initial project, is nearly
complete. The Well Project-Saint Paul Partners are
also working to establish an adequate and reliable
source of safe water onsite.
MSAADA, an architectural firm based in Minneapolis
that has years of experience building medical and
educational facilities in developing countries, has
been engaged by the task forces to create a master
plan for the new hospital. Initial plans have been
drawn for facilities that would cost an estimated
$500,000 to build the entire proposal, including all
the facilities required to attain District
Designated Hospital status.
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