By Zonya Jeffrey Training Manager, Manchester Medical Microbiology Partnership (MMMP)
After volunteering with Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) as a Laboratory Technologist many years ago, I set up a charity called Child Aid Tanzania.
The charity supports mothers, their babies and their families living in Ifakara, the rural market town where I volunteered.
It provides mosquito bed nets to new mothers, school uniforms to the poorest children and desks to the local primary school.
Zonya distributing bed nets to new mothers and babies
The charity has had volunteers raising funds from the UK and Switzerland and doing volunteer missions out in Tanzania, ranging from teaching support and art classes to bed net distributions.
Our sponsorship programme has seen our current three students progress from primary school to now being in secondary school.
Spending time with them on my recent volunteer trip to Tanzania was so great. Time really does fly.
Zonya with some of the students her charity has supported and one of the charity’s Tanzanian volunteers, laboratory scientist Lukresia Chale
The charity distributed 50 mosquito bed nets to the new mothers and babies in the neonatal unit and labour wards, giving them the protection (when they go home) from malaria, which is a leading cause of deaths in under-fives in Tanzania.
Having spent nearly four years working in the local hospital laboratory, I remember the high number of blood films the lab staff had to make, stain and read and I know all too well the importance of the bed nets in protection from malaria carrying mosquitos.
A big thank you goes out to all those that have and continue to support Child Aid Tanzania. See the charity’s website: http://www.childaidtanzania.org.uk
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