Story by Päivi Griffin
“I have come to get my baby checked,” young mother Elisabeth Moses said, holding a lively baby girl in a carry cloth among the crowd of people gathered in front of an unfinished building.
The clinic is run in a bare concrete structure with roofing providing shelter from the harsh sun. The building lacks doors, floors and windows, not to mention plumbing and electrics.
In cooperation with Kilimatinde Hospital, MAF flies a monthly mother and child clinic to the village of Dabia. During these outreach clinics, essential vaccines, growth monitoring and maternal check-ups are provided to those with no access to basic healthcare services.
Located in a remote village in the Dodoma region in Tanzania, Dabia is around 110km from the closest hospital, in Kilimatinde. Travelling by road would take over eight hours on a dirt road in good weather conditions, but an MAF flight reduces this to an hour.
“There are no health services available. If you get sick, transportation is a challenge - look at the mountains around us!” Elisabeth said, motioning towards the mountain ridges, surrounding her home.
“For any treatment, you must travel to Kilimatinde hospital. For us, that is a real struggle,” she added with deep sadness in her voice.
To travel to the hospital would cost around fifty thousand Tanzanian shillings, equivalent to roughly a tenth of an employed person’s monthly income living in the city.
The majority of people in smaller towns earn a much smaller living, their pay coming from produce from small plantations or livestock they keep, making such a journey impossible to most.
“There are no dispensaries here, absolutely none. If you need medicine, it is over 10 km by foot to Makutukula dispensary,” Azhari Jackson said. “We are hurting because of the lack of services.”
Apart from the monthly clinic MAF brings in, there are no maternity services here.
MAF flew in a team of seven professionals from Pamoja Specialised Polyclinic in Arusha to conduct a remote clinical outreach, offering various general and specialised medical services.
The common health conditions identified during the outreach demonstrated the continued burden of infectious diseases, nutritional deficiencies, poor sanitation, inadequate oral healthcare, and limited access to comprehensive healthcare services within the community.
In addition to general health problems, maternal health is a shared concern among those present.
“Apart from the monthly clinic MAF brings in, there are no maternity services here,” Anna Simon, a mother seeking help from the clinic said. “We are simply lost.”
Elias Balegele, the manager overseeing all the operations of Pamoja, can understand why.
“Mothers and children need clinics to monitor the growth of children. It’s critical to monitor the foetus from the womb up until the child turns five,” Elias explained.
“If they lack good management at that stage, we are going to see children who are not in good health.”
Through MAF’s support, health professionals are able to provide ongoing support through disease prevention and health education, focusing on the critical years of childhood development and detecting challenges during pregnancy.
The Pamoja healthcare team provided 156 people from different age groups and backgrounds with medical consultations, laboratory services, dental care, health education, counselling, diagnoses and treatment.
Carrying her baby in a cloth sling, Elisabeth was ready to make the journey home by foot. “Since MAF started operations here, we have seen good progress. Thanks to MAF’s services, we are doing better,” she said.
“We have attended very few men, less than ten,” Elias mentioned on the way back, looking saddened. In Maasai culture, men spend the days out with the livestock, segregated from the women. This means men are even harder to reach.
Looking out of the aircraft window over the passing plains and mountains ridges, Elias added: “Tanzania still needs investment in health services. Many remote areas completely lack access to health care.”