Our commitment to protect moms and babies
Kendwa – Zanzibar
Maternal and Infant Clinic
A center for childbirth assistance and prevention in the reproductive, vaccine and contraceptive fields.
Description
Having received a request for assistance, directly from the Ministry of Health care of Zanzibar, we financed and developed a medical centre to aid pregnant woman and new-borns from the Nungwi village located in the north of the Zanzibar Island (Tanzania).
The Foundation currently manages the medical centre, ensuring the efficiency and quality of the services and providing part of the medical and paramedic staff, the essential medication as well as the medical instruments/machinery. The clinic offers care, childbirth and prevention services in the reproductive, vaccine and contraceptive fields.
The Clinic has become a centre of excellence in Zanzibar, being the only institute where pregnant woman and children under the age of five can gain free access to all the services and medication. The free of charge and efficient service attracts numerous patients. This has added significant value to the rural areas where we operate, where the population still has little trust in modern medicine with many women still giving birth at home in very scarce and disastrous hygienic conditions.
A record year with 580 babies born in 2020 at Kendwa Maternity
The Kendwa Maternity Clinic has been responding to the infant health needs of the Zanzibar area for ten years. A maternity Clinic that has become a centre of excellence, and the only one where pregnant women have free access to all services and medicines. The Clinic has become a centre of excellence, and the only one where pregnant women have free access to all services and medicines. This is even more important in a rural area where the population still has little faith in official health care and many women give birth at home in poor hygienic conditions. In the last year, the numbers have hugely risen, partly due to the closure of the Nungwi birthing room. The mother-child Clinic supported by Renco reached 580 births in 2020, after a decade of just over 100 births a year, with a peak of 200 in 2014.
The quality but also the presence of Hawa, the full-time Chairwoman of the Clinic with two physicians, four nurses, thirteen among health workers, orderlies, cooks and guards is fundamental. In this perspective, the numbers become large. “We have a lot to do, especially because people, also come from faraway villages, attracted by the better health service offered by the Clinic thanks to the efforts of the “Rinaldo Gasparini Foundation””, says Angela Giacomazzi, Health Manager.
The year 2020, despite the difficulties of Covid, represents a very positive balance sheet for the Clinic, thanks to the presence of Chairwoman Hawa. The Foundation paid for her studies to become a physician. She graduated in 2018 and is now doing an excellent job at the hospital. Working so hard, always being there in case of an emergency call. “We receive many congratulations thanks to her”, says Angela Giacomazzi.
“The delivery room in Nungwi has been closed for almost a year due to lack of staff”.
Already in the past some patients came from Nungwi, now they all come to us in Kendwa. Nungwi is quite big so there are many more patients. “Hawa is almost always on duty. And if she is at home they go and call her. She is a permanent presence in the Island health system.” They give birth in Kendwa, because Hawa goes to check on them as soon as she hears someone coming, even if she is not on duty. She is a great physician with excellent professional ethics.