Brian & Angie Savage

An ophthalmologist (eye doctor) and nurse tutor, Brian and Angie have worked in a number of locations in Africa, and have recently taken up a post at the Haydom Lutheran Hospital, a mission hospital in the north of Tanzania, East Africa.

Originally from UK, Brian and Angie have spent almost 20 years in Africa, having given medical mission service in Zambia, Botswana, Malawi and Tanzania. They moved to Haydom in September 2004 on a two year contract. They have two adult children in England.

Brian is an Ophthalmologist (Eye Surgeon) and with local staff he is currently expanding the eye care services at Haydom Hospital, to give the whole population access to good eyesight. He is particularly experienced in operating to restore the eyesight of those blinded by Cataract, the cause of over half of blindness in rural Africa.

“It is a joy to see people, who were being led around blind, able to walk on their own the day after surgery, and to see their smile as they look you straight in the eye.”

Angie has a degree in nursing education and has taught nurses at degree and diploma level. She joins a number of other tutors and clinical instructors who teach the 110 Tanzanian students at Haydom School of Nursing on the 4 year nursing and midwifery diploma course. Angie has a particular interest in hospital infection control, and transcultural nursing.

Angie and Brian have had a long association with the Baptist church and enjoy the privilege of leading music worship ministry over a number of years.

“Worshipping with our colleagues and students is a lively, moving and vital spiritual experience, which we want to share with as many people as possible.”

Haydom Lutheran Hospital is a 400 bedded mission hospital under direction of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania, and supported by Norwegian Lutheran Mission, remotely situated in the Mbulu district of Manyara Region in Northern Tanzania.

Over the last 50 years the staff have provided a comprehensive health service to the people of the immediate surroundings, (443,000 population in the 2002 census), as well as many from adjacent districts in neighbouring regions. (Estimated total catchment population of 1.6 million).

Haydom Lutheran Hospital was built in 1954 and opened in 1955, to meet an urgent need for healthcare in this remote but populous area. The hospital now comprises a nursing school, medical and surgical wards, paediatric and obstetric departments, and regularly deals with all types of emergency on a 24 hour basis.

The current staffing is of three graduate doctors, four Assistant Medical Officers, a staff of nurses supervised by the Matron, and the total of 300 staff includes doctors, nurses, clinical officers, laboratory technicians, technical and ancillary staff, and the teachers in the nursing school. In addition, there are 125 nursing students on the 4 yr diploma course.

Haydom is remotely situated in northern Tanzania, in gently undulating hill country west of the escarpment of the rift valley, southwest of Lake Manyara and 150km south of the famous Ngorongoro Crater. Roads are unmetalled and seasonally affected by rains, making travel within the area difficult and sometimes impossible. The 300km journey by road to Arusha takes 6 - 10 hours, or around 1 hour by plane.

The eye clinic at Haydom hospital will be the first in Manyara Region to have a full-time Ophthalmologist attached. This will enable those requiring sight-restoring surgery to be treated, as well as the provision of glasses and medicines for those requiring them.

The nursing school at Haydom has a long history of success in training registered nurses for the Tanzanian health service.

A couple of weeks ago the medical director announces at the morning staff meeting in the library, that haydom has been asked for help in the diagnosis of a possible outbreak of swine flu in humans in Mbulu, the district centre 75km to the north west. I am standing near the back of the room, and as the director makes this announcement, the librarian starts a spasm of coughing and sneezing of convincing virulence. This evidence of infection in our midst almost drowns out the information being given. It is all I can do to stand fast and not obey the urge to move to the other side of the room.

Since then, there has been spread of the flu, which now apparently resides in a village not too far from Haydom. A number of our staff have also had ‘flu (it is the season), but people are much more hesitant to cough for fear of good-natured accusations of having the "mafua ya nguruwe".

Generally we have not been much affected by what appears to be a fairly mild affliction. We have however postponed one outreach trip for a month, because local people thought our visit might encourage spread of a disease which they do not fully understand and are rather afraid of.

Meanwhile in Moshi, the B.Sc nursing course is getting into gear, and Angie is lecturing them with enthusiasm. The numbers of nurses applying and getting places has increased and there are around 30 students in each of the 3 years now.

The Sunday morning service at the hospital chapel is a major gathering point for Christian students from many African countries, with a practical and useful sermon, and an emphasis on participation in worship with singing.

So, greetings from us standing in our garden in Moshi - Jackson, who is finishing his optometry course, Brian and Angie - and also the eye team at Haydom.

We are fine; there are some changes in our situation which we want to let you know about.

After much thought and prayer for both of us, Angie has moved back to Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre in Moshi, where we spent 6 years at the beginning of the millennium. Having received repeated contacts and interest from the nursing school there, she felt it was time to teach nursing at a degree level level, which might possibly have a useful influence on the people who face the challenges of nursing in Tanzania at present. Even before she started work, she was called by the Director there, who has asked her help with a number of initiatives!

Brian has been in discussion with people at the KCMC eye department. He sees a need for eye departments such as haydom and KCMC in the northern zone of Tz to combine their efforts, and co-operate to reach more blind people. discussions continue on such a plan, and the details are yet to be finalised.

Angie has moved on ahead to get house ready and to do some work on her research before starting in the BSc Nursing. Haydom will not be without nurse teachers however: There is a Haydom nurse who has just finished her BSc in Moshi, is going back to Haydom and who should be able to take over the subjects Angie was teaching in Haydom. Also the eye department will be strengthened, because the Tanzanian cataract surgeon from Haydom has also just returned from his studies. Brian is working with him to orientate him and support him, as well as having a KCMC trainee up in Haydom already.

The change will basically allow Angie to use her qualifications to teach future leaders and teachers of nursing, instead of the first diploma nurses. Haydom has been an interesting challenge, and has allowed Angie to work on further studies and to improve her kiswahili language.
Brian hopes to continue to help with the practical clinical work and teaching in Haydom, and hopes this will extend to trainees of all types from Moshi. He intends to spend a lot of time with the Haydom eye team, strengthening the contacts we have made and making sure the progress will be maintained

Angie will miss the quiet village life and her students and friends in Haydom, but has been warmly welcomed back in Moshi. She has just moved into a house in the KCMC Dr's compound, which is freshly painted and close to the hospital. Brian, who has spent the last 3 weekends there, also approves of the accommodation! We have also enjoyed worshipping back at the KCMC English Service on a sunday morning, appreciating the enthusiasm and willingness to participate that the members of the congregation show!

Since 2008 we have had 2 months of leave in UK and visited Lymm on 8^th March. It was a privilege to worship with you, sing some African songs, and also to present slides of the work we are involved in, and which the church has supported.

Thank you for your prayers, and we also thank people who keep in touch, send cards, emails etc. Sorry you do not always get an answer, but we are happy to try and keep in touch if we can lay our hands on misplaced email addresses etc!

Brian has continued with eye outreach to different places. Sometimes we find only a few patients

Sometimes it is very many, as here in Shelui in Iramba region, where we did 22 operations on blind people in a clinic with no electricity and no running water. There are some really big needs out here which must be dealt with.

Briefly to summarise what we presented to the church: work on the male student nurses’ hostel is proceeding well, and it should be finished in time for new arrivals in just over a month, and a lot of this work has been done with money from Lymm

A number of students are grateful for support with daily needs, and assistance with their school fees which they would not otherwise afford, and the eye programme has been supported with the purchase of some medicines, and fuel for the vehicle using your donations.

We pointed out that water supply was a problem, and it still is: Recently the village had to go without piped water because of a pump breakdown, and people had to draw unsafe water from the shrinking pools of the stream in the valley. Some supply has now been restored, but the situation is not yet satisfactory.

This final picture reminds us of the encouragement given in Isaiah 40, verse 31.

Finding that the internet is actually working today gives a good opportunity to send a brief message to you all. Maybe this will make up for the lack of news from us since our end of 2007 entry on the website!! How was the summer? Hear August has been rather dismal and wet. We hope that you all did get some rest and refreshment over the last few months.

As September starts, we are aware that A level and other exam results may be affecting a number of families, and we hope this is a positive time. Also people will be returning to work, school, studies etc. We hope this will not be too traumatic!

We hope to be in UK around February/March for a break as we did not get much holiday this year before the busy time of the year started. If it is convenient we would like to arrange to visit the church and give you a personal update on how things are going?

Our English family seems rather difficult to contact: our son in northeast UK seems ok with his family after moving house, and being currently employed. Our daughter is difficult to keep up with, each weekend she seems to have some other christian activity which leaves us breathless in trying to catch up with her, also in wondering where she gets the energy for this as well as her full-time homeless hostel day and night work. One day we will find out.

In Tanzania the really cold weather seems to have passed, and now it is getting warmer and is very dusty. The Norwegians are coming back from their summer holidays. However the hospital has to cope with problems: a lot of staff have slowly drifted away to the apparently better prospects of the government health sector. Also there is still a deficit in the financing, and we do not know how this will be fixed.

Meanwhile Angie continues teaching students. She is in the middle of a 2 week English course for newly arrived first years, and is very busy in her spare time with her study on vulnerable children in Haydom. Although this is for her Ph.D. by correspondence, she hopes that a proposal will come out of it to set up some support for the many orphaned and otherwise disadvantaged children hereabouts.

We are trying to meet different challenges this year in the eye department: we have discovered really poor people in certain areas of our catchment, and have been making difficult road trips to some of these. they are otherwise without eye care unless they themselves travel in search of it. the work is interesting and the team is good and enthusiastic. However it is quite tiring, and funding the work is a challenge. We will try to send a half year report soon.

1) Very poor people even in the relatively affluent village of Haydom, some of whom are affected by the loss of one or both parents, and are consequently without financial support

2) Please pray for the hospital and for an openness among the staff so that we may all share freely our ideas of improving our care of patients here, and meeting financial and spiritual challenges

3) We would value your prayer support for us as we seek wisdom to meet the daily challenges here.

We often think of you all and appreciate your support, and hope we can be guided in our prayers for you.

With over 250 emails in our box, some of them unanswered, we are resorting again to a communal “annual report”. We hope you will excuse us if:

Our life in the first half of 2007 was influenced a lot by heavy rains. Transport was difficult and vehicles were frequently bogged down in mud. Farmers found their crops were washed away by the torrential downpours, but in the end many managed a harvest. Since May it has been dry and dusty. Now in mid-December the blossoming trees, clouds building up in the afternoons, and rumbles of thunder, were followed at last by steady rain yesterday.

There has been uncertainty among staff for much of the year, because of the expectation of changes in the hospital. There was concern about the form these changes might take. Eventually it was announced that we have a new matron (or patron, as he is a male nurse), and a new principal tutor of the nursing school, who happens to be an expatriate. Also, the Medical Director has begun an administrative reorganization, and many hours have been spent in meetings about this. We do not know how effective these plans will be, as a lot of staff, particularly nurses and clinical officers, have left the hospital. Many have joined government health facilities, as the terms of service are better, and the health sector is being expanded.

Brian’s eye department has continued with 2-3 day outreaches at least twice per month. This strategy as well as the continued work at Haydom is enabling us to treat a record number of patients this year. We are nearing the 530 mark of cataract operations. Many satisfied clients, having rejoiced at their newly recovered freedom after the first eye was treated, have returned for operation of their other eye. We are very grateful, particularly, to those who have supported the programme with donations and encouragement. A report will be available soon. Things are not all rosy, however: the two nurses who have worked very hard in theatre preparation and in patient treatment, have both gone away to a 2-year upgrading course to become registered nurses. We wish them well, and hope replacements will arrive soon to ease the burden on the remaining staff.

Angie’s work in the nursing school has been very taxing: A number of tutors have been away or otherwise occupied, giving her a large teaching load. She continues to play a big part in the twice-weekly in-service training sessions.

The change of principal tutor produced an unexpectedly strong reaction from the student nurses, who refused to attend classes or duties. They were all suspended for 2 weeks, and returned together with parents, who negotiated with the school board so that the students resumed training without further sanctions. They are all back to their studies, and we hope will be fully settled in the coming weeks.

Angie continues to work on her dissertation about child vulnerability, and is working on a draft of chapter 4 to send to her professor. Then she needs to rewrite those first chapters, and eventually begin interviewing.

A number of people have been praying over the moral situation at Haydom. This continues to be a concern:

We have been blessed with many visitors, students and others, who often encourage us. We should mention specifically those who came out from England: Helen came out in July, and helped a lot with the orphan babies. Soon after, Ralph, Katie and Mark assisted with the physiotherapy department, and got us quite fit too, playing tennis almost every day! Angela and David came out in January and joined in the spiritual ministry at the morning prayers. Angela returned in October and taught a lot of enthusiastic workers how to speak and use English.

We ourselves have tried to vary our activities so that it is not all work: Cycling around the village and out past the airstrip gives a bit of exercise, as does the 2-hour “walk round the Haydom Mountain” (It is more of a hill really!). We also have enjoyed singing and making music with a variety of people. Even the weekly bible study has become much more musical as some young and musically inclined people have recently joined. Church services here tend to be rather non-participatory, so the more open atmosphere of the bible study gives us a much-needed spiritual uplift.

Since our holiday in April we have both been occupied in the hospital at Haydom with a variety of things, and have had some visits of local friends and short-term guests from abroad.

Angie’s 4^th year student nurses are getting ready for their final exams and Angie has been giving them a few extra sessions of revision. She has finished teaching her part of the midwifery course, and has been marking mock final exam papers, and continuing with the twice weekly English lessons for medical attendants, which can be fun. The students are adults who work in the hospital, many have only done primary education, and they try hard.

In her spare time, Angie is continuing with her research on vulnerable children (that is the very poor, orphaned etc), as there seem to be many here. The aim is to be able to identify them fairly, and to find out what is culturally appropriate to do for them. There is no social services system in place, and there are no government or NGO schemes here in Haydom.

Angie has been helping to train and support the nursing school choir, some members of which will soon be recording a cassette/cd. Brian has been asked to preach at the morning prayers on several occasions this year. We have attended various churches in the locality, notably the Lutheran and the pentecostal church, and were recently invited to a very friendly village church about 10km away.

Brian’s eye team has traveled 2850 km since January on the stream beds that pass for roads here, and examined 1700 people in the bush who have eye problems. Many of these can be helped with a simple pair of glasses, and we have dispensed 200 in the community, as well as over 500 bottles of eye medicine. The team has already done a larger number of operations than usual, 240 cataract operations since January, and 149 of these were done on our outreach trips to other hospitals and health centres.

Some of these health centres have no electricity or running water! We are encouraged, therefore, to make a big push in this second and usually busier half of the year. We want to reach a record number of people and restore their sight. Outreach expenses are 40 pounds for a 100 km round trip, and 10 pounds will pay for the intraocular lens and other consumables we use for one destitute patient having a cataract operation. 100 pounds covers the logistical costs of a big 3 day outreach.

Brief review for Lymm Baptist church. Also available as a Powerpoint presentation, click here.

Thank you for keeping in touch and remembering us during 2006, our second full year here. After several drafts here is our "annual report". Although it is a serious document, we both had a lot of laughs over each other’s attempts at creating memorable prose!

This has not been an easy year for the hospital. The "new" hospital director has had to face an economic crisis, and staffing problems. His aim has been "putting the patient at the centre"; a difficult aim to achieve.

The quality control committee was dissolved about a year ago and some alternative measures have been started, such as working on job descriptions and clinical policies. We feel that more supportive supervision for clinical staff at all levels might help. Nationally, nursing standards in Tanzania are known to be a problem.

Many people in this poor area have difficulty getting school fees, paying hospital bills and some even getting food. We often have people coming to us at work or at home with requests for assistance. The government systems for providing for the very poor and orphans do not yet seem to be fully functional.

We would appreciate your prayer for the hospital leaders, and for improved communication. We miss the church fellowship in Moshi, and find some churches here are more traditional than we are used to, and although there are livelier church services in some denominations, their sermons are usually longer and not always clearly understandable.

Brian is attaching details of his work in a separate document; he has been expanding the eye outreach work, while teaching cataract surgery to trainees from KCMC.

Angie has many, often conflicting, responsibilities. She continues to teach in the school of nursing; English for the new students, anatomy, epidemiology and midwifery as well as clinical teaching in maternity ward and ICU. She is in charge of the school of nursing choir, and tries to help them to expand their repertoire. They sing well and learn quickly, although they are tentative about singing in English: this is a challenge for most students, because it’s their 3rd language after Kiswahili and their tribal language. Since textbooks and exams are all in English we must help them to try.

Angie coordinates the hospital continuing education programme. She has encouraged local staff to make presentations, as well as the expatriates (traditionally the presentations were largely by visiting specialists). This has necessitated quite a lot of support with preparation of the presentation; hopefully with time the local staff will develop more confidence. The one or two presentations a week have been on subjects as varied as fire safety, research by visiting medical students, erudite presentations on AIDS (an enormous problem here) and community development projects.

Angie oversees the hospital library, and would like to give more attention to this. Some subject categories are sadly lacking in up-to-date books. There is no hospital budget for this, so we need to write some project proposals.

The hospital needs job descriptions for all the clinical staff; and Angie has the responsibility for much of this challenging but important work, together with a Norwegian lady. It has turned out to be a slow process, but a first draft is almost ready for the job description committee.

Personally we have been encouraged by the enormous help we have had from you family and friends, in terms of concern, prayer and financial support. We have been able to get equipment, books, help with student nurse school fees and pay for treatment of very poor patients. It’s also been encouraging to have Emmanuel Santuri, our friend who is an optometrist, working with us in Haydom, and welcome visitors from Moshi too.

The progress of our garden has been a joy: it is hard to keep up with the crops of spinach, carrots, pumpkins, beans, bananas and pawpaws, which we therefore share with others. Otherwise, most days we try to shake off our post-work lethargy, trying to keep fit with bike rides and walking.

We hope this year the Good News of Christmas will not be obscured by the decorations. Sending warm greetings from both of us.

The report is an Adobe PDF files. In order to view it you will require the Adobe Acrobat Reader which is available as a free download here.

Thank you for your continuing interest and support. We’d just like to brief you on our current situation, and would appreciate your prayers.

It is still the dry season here, and it is hot, windy and dusty. It may rain within the next month or two.

In the school of nursing it has been a transitional time with 4th years finishing, new first years (35 of them) and the others moving up. So plenty of exams to write and mark! Angie took the new first years for an English course before they started on the rest of their curriculum, and found that singing, games and videos interspersed with conversation and grammar exercises helped to build confidence. Angie now teaches anatomy and physiology, some aspects of community health, and midwifery, as well as clinical work in ICU. She is coordinating the continuing education programme of the hospital and is writing job descriptions in moments in between.

Brian currently has a cataract trainee with him from KCMC, and a volunteer eye Dr from Norway, so is using the opportunity to do plenty of outreach trips. The optometrist Emmanuel is a big help with testing vision and prescribing and making glasses. Since we arrived in Haydom 2 years ago, over a thousand eye operations have been done, and over 800 of them being sight-saving cataract operations.

Having had an acute nursing staff shortage earlier this year, it is not clear how the nursing staffing levels will pan out now: many of the newly qualified nurses have agreed to stay for the time being, but may leave at any time. Many of the nurses who had served a one year contract are now leaving, and a few have been recruited from other hospitals.

We continue to be struck by the poverty of many people here, many of whom find it hard to obtain basic necessities, water, education (children have to have shoes and uniforms to be allowed in school, and there are fees for secondary school) and health care.

We have been using donations to provide the deposit for school fees for 6 new student nurses who have no family funding or are orphans, as well as to help 5 very poor students in other years with a little pocket money every month. We have also bought new anatomy books for a class set to replace an old edition that was falling to pieces. We have bought baby milk for use with the orphan babies in maternity ward who are not old enough to tolerate cows’ milk. We are also in the process of obtaining 2 extra sets of cataract surgical instruments to make it possible to operate on more cases especially on outreach trips.

These items, and also consignments of empty soap dispensers, children's clothes, and some song books and text books, were all enabled to reach us here in Tanzania with the help of donations we received while recently in UK.

Brian & Angie visited the UK this summer and were with us at LBC on Sunday 21^st May where they gave a presentation on their work at Haydom.

Here is a picture the new medical director, Dr Oystein Olsen, who arrived, together with his wife Turid and three young children, in December 2005. He is standing with the three other members of the management team, who were responsible for looking after the hospital before he arrived. They are: Mr Samwel Mshashi, Administrator, Dr Isacki Malleyeck, deputy medical director, and Sr Selina Sanka, Matron.

We are encouraged and grateful for Brian’s quick recovery from his recent serious illness, an answer to many people’s prayers. Also the eye clinic programme is doing quite well, and a lot of blind and visually handicapped are being reached: almost 500 cataract operations were performed in 2005.

The hospital is currently facing an acute financial crisis (“we do not know where March salaries will come from”), as well as the identified need to improve the quality of services.

Major change is necessarily a challenge, and we have experienced some big discouragements. We miss the worship of the “English Service” at KCMC. We ask for your continued prayers. We believe God has a good plan for the hospital and we pray that this may be put into effect very soon.

During July we managed a couple of weeks leave, after which we experienced a dramatic return to Haydom:

As we drove the last few kilometres, urgent voices on the vehicle radio alerted us to a major accident ahead. We rounded the last bend and came upon a swarm of ambulances randomly parked, and a crowd gathering. A bus had rolled backwards down the hill, and broken through the flimsy parapet of the bridge below the hospital, to lie in the river bed beneath.

We climbed down to the bus and established that no-one was still inside. Then we sped up the hill to Haydom. At the hospital we found a melee of staff, students, patients and relatives trying to cope with the sudden influx of more than 20 injured travellers, and worked with the team for the rest of the evening. The recently donated CT scan was made to work overtime to assist in the assessment of those with head injuries. One young man died the next day despite surgery, but fortunately others made a good recovery.
We are all the more grateful, therefore, to have been blessed with safe travelling during our holiday: after driving to Arusha, we attended a wedding in Dar es Salaam, a thousand km from here! It was good to be present to see Ethel and Anthony married, and meet some old friends including Marion the bridesmaid, Peter and his wife Juliet from Malawi, Manasseh and Esther, and Emanuel Santuri.

After that we braved the ferry trip to Zanzibar. The boat corkscrewed its way through the swell: passengers fending off nausea were comforted by an action video thriller in which the characters, one by one, were eaten by tiger sharks.

Elaine has been with us since finishing her degree in early July, and she has extended her stay through August so that she can get to know Haydom better, and assist in looking after the four orphan babies currently in the maternity department. We have liked being a family again, and enjoyed her guitar playing in the choir. Together we climbed the Hanang mountain, crammed inside local buses in Dar, took turns at the wheel of an aging landcruiser, and shopped in Arusha.

Now it is back to working out our role in the tough and challenging life of the people in the Haydom community.

We heard yesterday that the medical superintendent of Haydom hospital, Dr Ole Halgrim Evjen Olsen, passed away on Sunday afternoon. There are more details on the hospital website.

Thank you for your continued interest in our life and work here in Tanzania. Your prayers are also much appreciated.

We are happy that prayer for rain has been answered – indeed the rainy season has continued beyond expectations. It looks hopeful that the people here will get some crops – some have already been harvesting maize and beans, and there are fields of sunflowers to be harvested later. This is wonderful for an area often affected by famine. The picture shows some of our own garden produce.

Brian continues to build up his eye work. He now has a clinical officer, 2 enrolled nurses, 2 cataract case finders and 2 nurse attendants who are keenly involved. The eye clinic building is in full use, with examination rooms, staff room and store room. The theatre for local anaesthetic operations is used for most patients, so Brian doesn’t have to queue to use the main theatre except for children.

He has now done ten outreach trips including one by plane and has done 150 cataract operations since 1st January. The picture shows our nurse, Sr Emiliana, counselling a 95 yr old lady about her eye condition, at a recent outreach in Labay Lutheran church.

Angie carries on in the school of nursing with classroom teaching. There is also clinical teaching which has largely been on maternity ward in the last 2 months, with quite some time spent with the premature babies. The care is low-tech; basically keeping babies warm and fed, and free from infection. Mothers often deliver prematurely because of the high fever of malaria or relapsing fever.

The medical director, Dr Olsen, has been fighting cancer for over a year now, and is currently in Norway. He is very sick, and we ask your prayers for him and his wife and family.

Angie helps with the continuing education programme for all the staff, and the quality control committee, to try to help improve the standard of care. We have been starting with very basic topics, including hand-washing, cleanliness, personal protective equipment, prevention of pressure sores, wound care, patients’ rights, promoting the idea of staff meetings.

Poverty is such a challenge here: Many people can’t even get to a health facility because they haven’t got the bus fare. Those who live close enough to walk or bike are fortunate, like these two elderly men climbing up to the hospital.

However people who get to the hospital may still not have the money for tests. For example, Angie saw a lady last week who thought she may be pregnant with twins. It was not clear on examining her, and as she was quite worried, it seemed a good idea to check it out with a scan. She did not have the 500/= (25pence) for an ultrasound scan; fortunately we were able to negotiate that she have the scan and pay next week. Other ladies could not afford the 200/= (10pence) for a haemoglobin check. Yet anaemia is a common and dangerous complication of pregnancy.

The hospital administration is frustrated that the Tanzanian government only contributes 5% of the hospital budget, and patients contribute about 30%, although most of them are very poor. It may be that if Haydom applies for referral hospital status from the government, more financial support would be available. We shall need more specialists, as at the moment we can only boast a surgeon, an orthopaedic specialist and an eye Dr! We wonder whether more Tanzanian doctors will be willing to come here as there are no opportunities for private practice.

We are grateful for support from those who have collected empty soap dispensers (which are still needed) and old towels (you can make the present consignment the last as we now have a good stock). New cheap reading glasses as found in cut-price stores and supermarkets will still be useful for a long time to come. (We now have a full stock of used old glasses – thank you very much.) Angie is likely to take on some responsibility for the hospital library. Any donations for books for the students will be welcomed!

Brian has been playing(for want of a better word!) keyboard and Angie has been leading a small choir of nurses, students and others, and we lead the morning worship most Wednesdays. People here are very conscious of their spiritual needs, and in addition to the daily morning prayers, usually start a car journey or a surgical operation with a prayer. We have a lot to learn from their faith.

We really appreciate your continued support and interest. The last months have been a continuing orientation for us. The people here are different from Moshi; although most of the staff speak Swahili, many of the Tanzanians here are Wairacq, Wanyaturu and Wadatoga, who prefer (or only know) their own languages. There are also some Wahatzabe, who are bit like the Bushmen of Botswana. The expatriates are almost all Norwegians. So there is very little English spoken around here!

The last 3 weeks have been very dry, and everyone was very worried about their crops drying out. We thank God that in the last 2 days, there has been some rain again, indeed a torrential downpour on Sunday which produced a flood of water all through the eye clinic (the rain water drainage system has, we hope, been attended to now). Fortunately no precious equipment had been left on the floor.

Brian has been getting the eye clinic organised, and now has a clinical officer and 2 nurses to help him, as well as 2 ward attendants. One nurse and one ward attendant have just come back from a short course to help them identify cataract patients in the community. He has been making contacts and exploratory visits so as to be able to get an outreach programme going. It has just started, and we hope that as well as ministers and village leaders announcing the eye services, satisfied customers will pass the word around.

Angie has been teaching all of the four years in the school of nursing, most of her time is with 2nd years doing clinical teaching in ICU, 1st years teaching anatomy and 4th years teaching midwifery. She is coordinating a Bible study and students’ choir, trying to get more books for the students, who do not have class sets in many subjects and have very few up to date books in their library, and is busy with the hospital quality control committee and the continuing education programme for all the staff. She has already been helping prepare basic topics, and coaching others to present them, such as cleanliness and hand washing, sharps management and wound management. There is plenty to be done in this area. Matron has been helping to get donated small towels (which get recycled) and liquid soap available in the wards which staff can use for hand washing. This is a great improvement, and the staff appreciate it. We trust it will help to reduce rates of infection.

We would especially like to thank you for the money which we received which we have used for books for the student nurses, and for all the towels and soap dispensers which have arrived too. They are really helping us to improve things here. Thank you for remembering us and for keeping us in your prayers. Matron (Selina Sanka) and the nursing school principal (Ulumbi Lyanga) join in sending sincere thanks.

We should be grateful if you could continue to pray for our work and for the hospital superintendent, Dr Olsen, who is 77 years old and receiving treatment for cancer again. Also for the hospital at a time of transition.

We should be grateful for prayer for "Emmanuel group" which is a group that meets in our house twice a week and leads morning prayers once a week. We enjoy singing and worshipping together; there is a mixture of people introduced to us by our friend Emmanuel Nuwass, who is from Haydom, now studying in KCMC.

We should also be grateful for prayer for continuing rain, so that at least the maize which is not too badly affected by the dry weather can be saved.

We thank God for the safe arrival of a new "granddaughter"; Grace and Venna’s baby. She is called Angela Elizabeth; she hasn’t yet sorted out what is day and what is night, but she is very sweet.

The first container has reached the Savages in Tanzania. We would like to thank the church for the towels and dispensers - we sent 44kg in the first batch, and about 30kg a couple of weeks later. We will let you know if/when we need more. Thanks again for the support.

Thank you for your continued prayers. The following is just to keep you updated.

Apparently the Norwegian container will be sent off in December, so if you have any things to send, it would be ideal if they could reach Norway by the end of November.

Out here in Haydom we are doing OK.

This is a dawn view from our garden.

Things people could do for us:

Pray over the “challenges” mentioned above.
The small towel programme is going well in eye clinic, and we hope to extend to other departments. We have an address in Norway where packages of old towels could be sent. See below:
Another thing that would be very useful would be empty liquid soap containers, the sort that many people use now in their bathrooms and kitchens, where you press on a little lever and you get a small amount of liquid soap. We could use any number of those for the wards and departments.
If you go to “Poundland” or similar store where everything is a pound, you may find they sell new reading glasses and sunglasses. We brought about 50 of these out here, and they have been very popular at the eye clinic. Collecting some of these and getting them sent out to us would be very helpful. Any strength of reading glasses will do.

Things we can do for you? Let us know how you are all doing. We would love to know, and to pray for you too!

God Bless you all!

Brian and Angie Savage

Send email with questions or comments about this web site or click here.
Copyright © 2003-2010 Lymm Baptist Church All Rights Reserved
Registered Charity Number 1130935
Last modified: 09 February 2010

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Send email with questions or comments about this web site or click here. Copyright © 2003-2010 Lymm Baptist Church All Rights Reserved Registered Charity Number 1130935 Last modified: 09 February 2010

Site hosted by Reepicheep

Send email with questions or comments about this web site or click here.
Copyright © 2003-2010 Lymm Baptist Church All Rights Reserved
Registered Charity Number 1130935
Last modified: 09 February 2010