From MartinRS at aol.com Thu Nov 17 17:12:47 2011 From: MartinRS at aol.com (MartinRS at aol.com) Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2011 17:12:47 -0500 (EST) Subject: [CCIH-Hospitals] Report on development of hospital and health program in Tanzania Message-ID: <2ea03.7bfc66da.3bf6e0df@aol.com> CCIH hopes that sharing information about hospital development projects will be of interest to readers of the CCIH Christian Hospitals listserv. Here is information about a project in Tanzania. If you, or someone you know, is in the greater Washington, DC area, we hope you can come to this presentation on November 26. Ray Martin Christian Connections for International Health A SPECIAL WAY OF EXPRESSING THANKSGIVING You are invited to spend Saturday evening, November 26 at 7pm, learning about a project in Tanzania that is a collaboration between Tanzanians and supporting churches and others in the U.S. to strengthen medical and health services in a rural area of Tanzania. The organization is called International Health Partners US and Tanzania (IHP) (_www.ihptz.org_ (http://www.ihptz.org/) ) and the presentation about IHP will be made by Denny and Paula Lofstrom, an American couple who spend most of their time in Tanzania. The meeting will be held at the Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, 3022 Woodlawn Avenue, Falls Church, VA. IHP is an affiliate of Christian Connections for International Health, _www.ccih.org_ (http://www.ccih.org/) . We encourage anyone in the greater Washington, DC area to attend. Nancy Young, CCIH Operations Manager, is coordinating with the church to organize the evening. You can contact her for more information at _nyoung at ccih.org_ (mailto:nyoung at ccih.org) . IHP is a non-governmental, non-profit organization formed to facilitate partnerships from all over the world with Tanzania to improve health care. IHP-US is a sister organization in the United States that helps to raise funds. IHP-TZ is an official NGO (non-governmental organization) in Tanzania that is on the ground working with the funds to develop the projects. All personnel at IHP are volunteers. Only the African staff is paid. In Dodoma, IHP has a contract with St. John's University and supported the opening of a baccalaureate level nursing school, which has been open now for four years and has become the largest nursing school in the country with 324 students. IHP has also completed paying for land at Zinga, just north of Dar es Salaam, for a Pediatric AIDS Hospital. In Mwanza, the East of Lake Victoria Diocese of the Lutheran Church donated a lovely 16 room complex for the beginning of a health center serving a catchment area of 186,000 people. Work continues toward developing the health center into a hospital. IHP is currently renovating a Women's Health and Birthing Center because this area has a high maternal and infant mortality rate. IHP is also building an eye and dental center to provide these important services and has completed an isolation ward. Efforts are also underway to begin a pediatric unit. There is a broader focus. The Sukuma tribe, which is the major tribe in this area, is about 1% Muslim, 6% Christian, and all the rest tribal/traditional. When women become too old to go out into the forest to cut wood, they cook over dung (which is very high in urea), and their eyes become red and irritated and then infected. They are accused of being witches and killed, usually hacked to death. IHP would like to build a Women's Wisdom Center in order to offer the tribe the alternative of letting the women come to a safe location within the hospital compound where they will be "hired." This large number of older women coupled with the large number of orphans due to parent deaths from AIDS make an ideal pairing of the Women's Wisdom Center with an orphanage. The orphanage will be constructed in the style of family groups with the older women fulfilling the role of grandmother. We hope that many of you will be able to attend. As we experience the "thanks" in this Thanksgiving holiday for the many blessings we receive and share throughout the world, we may also discover unique ways in which we can "give." Please forward this invitation to others who may be interested.