Bring clean water to 100 villages in Tanzania

We launched this COVID appeal in April 2020 for emergency funds to provide PPE kit and hand washing station equipment for dispensaries, health centres and small hospitals. Thanks to your generosity we raised over £13,600. With additional individual donations by Britain Tanzania Society members and three supporting charities the total funds raised were over £28,000.   This generous funding stream enabled us to fund a total of 72 health facilities so that they could purchase locally made reusable PPE gowns, masks, hand washing stations buckets and stands. These ranged from small local dispensaries up to district hospitals, but all were desperately in need of simple PPE and other resources.

These photos, typical of many received from grateful health staff, show masks being sewn by a nursing Sister, a Mother and her Son using a new hand washing station and medical staff at one health centre in Njombe Region in their locally made PPE kit.

Messages from the clinics and hospitals express a very heartfelt thank you for your support for the appeal and for the benefit it has brought to so many medical staff and patients.

The COVID situation in Tanzania seems to have settled down rather more rapidly than in other parts of the world. The government has announced that the country is "coronavirus-free",

Given Tanzania stopped publishing numbers of its coronavirus cases in May, it is difficult to verify how well the country's approach has worked. The country had 509 infections when it published its final tally on 29 April. The health ministry has also announced the closure of coronavirus treatment and isolation centres meaning it is now difficult for health centres to request any COVID related funds.

Therefore we have decided to change our focus to support post COVID recovery. Our priority project funding areas for this are clean water, health and income generation support for rural families where COVID has impacted on family incomes and activities and education support for girls through schools’ hostels accommodation to improve in school progression and academic attainment.

In the longer term we hope this will have a positive impact on girls with academic ability to make successful and higher achievement progress in their secondary school studies. How wonderful it will be if some will be able to move on to become health workers, doctors and nurses in the future. 

Thank you for supporting this appeal. If you have any comments, suggestions or questions please do get in touch.

Wishing everyone a safe and happy holiday period in this very difficult year.