The "Tanzania Aid Litembo" supports a hospital in the south of the East African country. Hardly any strangers get lost in the Ruvuma region, located in the extreme south of Tanzania on the border with Mozambique. The tourist centers of the East African country - Serengeti, Kilimanjaro or the island of Zanzibar - are hundreds of kilometers away.
population here consists mostly of poor farmers. The nationwide electricity supply is only just being built up, water has to be laboriously drawn from wells and "medicine is 50 years behind ours," explains Dr. Werner Jax.
The former chief physician of the Marien-Hospital Marl has been committed to the region for more than 17 years. Through "Tanzania Hilfe Litembo" he and the Katholische Kliniken Ruhrgebiet Nord (KKRN) have been supporting the Diocesan Hospital Litembo and its 18 branches for around a decade, expanding it into a functioning clinic that cares for around 400,000 people.
They receive support from the Marien-Hospital Marl and the Rotary Club Recklinghausen-Haard. "Helping people to help themselves" is the motto. "Unlike in many other African countries, the political situation in Tanzania is stable, so we can do good and, above all, sustainable work there," explains Jax.
Simply supplying medical equipment to the region has no nutritional value. "You also need a team that can handle the equipment," says the doctor. They don't just want to import technology, they also want to import their knowledge.
The state only offers basic medical care in the predominantly Christian region, which is almost twice the size of North Rhine-Westphalia. "In the past, entire villages died of HIV, malaria and tuberculosis," Jax remembers.
Today, this 'trio' can be treated across the board, so that HIV patients, for example, can also survive thanks to the medication that is now available."
