GFH at JGI and in Tanzania

Katie, August (left) with Alice Macharia, JGI director of East Africa programs in front of a classic image of Dr. Jane Goodall

After days of canceled flights and other travel woes, our full team of staff and volunteers has finally arrived in Kigoma, Tanzania. This month, they’ll be training ten more local health workers in the Single Visit Approach and screening nearly 300 women. They’ll also have the pleasure of a visit from Dr. Jane Goodall herself, who is celebrating 50 years of saving chimpanzees and empowering their human neighbors in the nearby Gombe National Park.

Just last month, August and I visited the Jane Goodall Institute in Washington, DC. JGI has been Grounds for Health’s partner in Tanzania since the inception of our program there, linking us to community leaders, local health authorities, and JGI’s thriving network of village health promoters, or community-based distribution agents (CBDAs).

In a meeting with JGI’s Alice Macharia, George Strunden, and Claire Jones, we discussed the key outcomes of our last two years in Kigoma. In that time, we’ve equipped two regional hospitals for cryotherapy, trained ten doctors and nurses, screened over 1,500 women, and of the 40 who tested positive, 90% were able to receive treatment the same day. We’ve recruited Dr. Annah Kichambati, former lead trainer for JGI’s CBDA program, to coordinate follow-up with trainees and promoters. The Tanzanian Ministry of Health has named our program one of five national demonstration sites. In light of these successes, we cemented our commitment to an ongoing Grounds for Health/JGI partnership and to telling the powerful story of our work in Kigoma.

In the coming year, we’ll be partnering with the International Committee for AIDS Prevention (ICAP), regional and national Ministries of Health, and our long-standing coffee partners Kanyovu and Sustainable Harvest, to expand our programs and ensure their long-term sustainability. Thanks to these collaborations, we’ve been able to align Grounds for Health’s and JGI’s missions of women’s health and conservation through community empowerment.