Tanzania Team Travels

On Friday, October 5, while the Traveling Women were working at the Women's Day of Sewing , the Traveling Men went a further 50 minutes down the (very bumpy) road to visit Iambi Hospital.  The Iambi Hospital is a private hospital, under the auspices of the Lutheran church, and managed by Pastor Manase Msengi, who is also an attorney.  He is in the center of this photograph, where we are meeting several of the doctors on staff. Now before I go on, I want to try to emphasize some important points about the Hospital, which will get buried if I continue with a straight chronological telling of the story of the day. Two of the biggest jobs of the staff at this hospital are the treatment of AIDS patients, and the Palliative/Hospice care they provide for people in the region who cannot get to the Hospital.  Large parts of the Hospital are reserved for clinics which are open on Monday and Thursday each week.  These clinics are visited by people who need to come ...

Our first day in Tanzania started with breakfast, and then we drove a very short drive from our hotel to the Arusha Lutheran Medical Centre. This hospital is supported by many ELCA churches, and its current status as one of the finest hospitals in all of Tanzania is a result of many people, but the leaders in this effort are Drs. Mark and Linda Jacobson.  Pastor Glenn had met them several times, and his congregation in Austin supported the ALMC financially.  We hoped to get a chance to meet them, but we found out they were out with other ELCA mission teams at the time.  Nevertheless, we were given a grand tour by a man named Simba, who is responsible for the facility.  We saw the IT area, the Ob/Gyn area, the imaging labs, one of the many laboratories, the ICU, the Emergency department, and probably more that I've forgotten. The single most impactful  area we saw was the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.  We learned that the leading cause of death for ch...