Malaria and pneumonia, as in this case, is the commmonest combination that leads to admission onto the ward.
(Photo: © David Scott)
In rural Tanzania it's not always enough to give sick people medicine. Mission partner Ruth Hulser is helping create family for people with no family.
So, you've got tablets to take - "with food, three or four times daily". But what if you don't have enough food for three meals a day?
What if you can't read or write and get lost on your way to the hospital?
Or you're just too fearful of having to fill in forms or pay money you don't have?
These are all painfully relevant questions in Tanzania. Here, family is all: social security, health care provider, nursing care, economic security, access to education, emotional and psychological security.
In pictures
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All the things a UK citizen might expect to be covered by the welfare state.
What if you have no family members left to take care of you?
A burning question
After three years based at St Philip's Health Centre in Tabora, Dr Ruth Hulser was asking herself one burning question: how do you help these people, perhaps five per cent of patients, who fall through the gaps?
It was during a prayer time in one of her link churches that the answer was offered to Ruth by a church member: One Family – Familia Moja.
Familia Moja is a family for people who have no family. An initial gift of £1,000 paid for two employees to follow up the patients who need extra support, coming alongside to share the minimal resources available just as a family would.
It's transformed the way Ruth and her staff relate to 'clients'. "I have now lots of people who call on me as if I was their aunt, or daughter or sister or mother. And they see me as part of their family. It has totally changed the way I see all patients because now I see behind the picture, it's made me much more aware of how people live."
People like the elderly Ramadhani, a Muslim gentleman who suffers from terrible bedsores. Familia Moja 'adopted' him, providing a mattress to help ease the sores, and enough nutritious food so that his daughter could stop going away to work 12-hour days for a wage that did not pay enough to live on.
Peaceful despite his suffering Ramadhani said, "I know God is with me because you are here."
Healing communities
Familia Moja has come alongside more than 300 families and individuals so far – and is growing all the time. maybe a family has had a bad harvest, and just needs some grain for a couple of months to keep them healthy. Or maybe someone has no family and need people to be alongside them and support them long term – but "without 'dishing out' so they don't become dependent," says Ruth.
The next part of the Familia Moja vision is to become self-sufficient. They've obtained a 60-acre plot where they hope to grow enough food for Familia Moja's needs, but also build a literal community there.
"We have a vision of small independent houses in Tanzanian style – built really low cost – where people can live and be nursed and if necessary, for some, even have palliative or terminal care. But also where people can recover and maybe then build their own units.
"We hope to have little local communities of Familia Moja – people will be brought into a healing community where people will carry them and they will also carry the others.
"This might be a brilliant option for rehousing people who are at very great risk – who have no homes, have been thrown out because they have AIDS, or are just too sick to look after themselves."