By Co-Founder Susan Gustafson

Dr. Joyce Cuff, just returned for her fifth year of volunteering at FAME Medical. As always, she returns with a level of dedication that amazes and inspires. Over the next 9 months, Dr. Joyce will be generously sharing her expertise with our team at FAME. She will also be spearheading the microbiology and culture and sensitivity project we hope to have up and running soon. We are thrilled to have her back. The following excerpt is from her personal blog. I am sharing it with you because it captures some of the landscape around us, as well as the daily challenges so many of our patients face.

“The drive from the airport to FAME is always a powerful experience for me. The contrast between New England and Northern Tanzania seems particularly stark during those few hours. The first thing that I notice is how parched the land is around Kilimanjaro and Arusha. Large herds of cattle seem to graze on dirt, kicking up clouds of dust as they move from one grassless place to another. The few watering holes that still have water serve as lifelines for the cattle and the people. People travel great distances to collect water in plastic jerry cans or buckets, sometimes carrying the buckets on their heads or on poles balanced across their shoulders, at other times strapped to the back of a donkey or loaded onto a donkey cart. While at the water hole people bathe and wash their clothes and drape them on thorn bushes to dry and exchange news of the day. As we get closer to Karatu, the landscape changes, first to fields of dry, yellow grass and finally, when we reach the higher elevation of Karatu, we see some green. It is not the rich, verdant fields we see after the rains, but at least there is recognizable vegetation. Like the landscape, the circumstances of people’s everyday lives vary from desperate to some level of comfort and security. This differs from New England in that the proportion of people in the lower levels of the comfort scale is so much higher here and the signs of affluence very much less common. It is my hope and my belief that FAME acts much like the watering holes I see on my way to Karatu, providing a medical lifeline for those in the area, regardless of circumstances.”

By Sokoine Kipaiwa

Sokoine with Traditional Birth Attendant

My name is Sokoine Kipaiwa, and I have one year and a half working at FAME reception. I recently started new responsibilities as a community outreach counselor. My first task, working on a project for our Every Mother Counts grant, was to make sure that we visit, as much as we can, all the Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs) around the nearby areas of Karatu District and Ngorongoro. Our main goal is to make pregnancy and childbirth safe for every mother by informing all the nearby communities about the new services we offer at FAME medical, including Reproductive and Child Health (RCH), the delivery ward and the operating theater.

I remember my first visit was at Jilambo Village in the Karatu District on June 2nd at 10:30am. The RCH team and I visited one active TBA, Regina Christopher, at her own home. The first question she asked us was “why is FAME visiting the TBAs? Why are you using your time and money this way?” We thought she was going to chase us away from her home, so I had to look down and so did my fellows, and everyone was quiet. Then she said “we are a community of low income and so very poor that nobody ever remembers to visit you at your home.”

Then my heart began to pound, and I told her “Bibi, we are both human, and we were born to help each other every time in every place without minding costs and time we spend.” We explained to her the importance of working together with the local dispensary’s health providers and home birth attendants as well.  We explained the signs for pregnant women to seek help at a hospital, danger signs during labor or birth, danger signs during pregnancy, danger signs after birth, and for the newborn, and all the other services we offer at FAME. We gave her our brochures and emergency cell phone numbers.

She was very delighted to hear that FAME Medical was cooperating with the TBAs and providing quality healthcare services within Karatu villages and nearby areas. She said, “throughout my life, now I’m 67 years old, I never held and shared information from health organizations who educated and appeared to a TBA like me, but only you are doing this in our village” She provided with us her cell phone number for anything we need from her and said we can call her back at any time and she will be together with us and help us. Finally, every one of us was very happy to have met with an active and experienced TBA as we start our outreach program.

FAME RCH Coordinator, Joyce Ngowi, with TBA's 

Hannah Bowman and Elliot Beckley

By Co-Founder Susan Gustafson

Frank and I just returned from another fantastic fundraising tour in the US! We were thrilled to be able to share the new FAME video (by Hannah Bowman and Elliot Beckley) at events and gatherings along the way and now wish to share it with ALL of YOU.  

“One night, about a year and a half ago, I spent several hours reading almost every word of text on FAME’s website. I was both hooked and awed — especially at the enormous progress they have made in just the last several years. Not everyone can afford to take time off and fly to Tanzania to see this organization at work though, so I wanted to help FAME share their story across the ocean. Elliot and I started a fundraising campaign through the crowdfunding site Indiegogo, and by hosting fundraising events to pay for our equipment and travel expenses. By November of last year, we met our goal and started on our three month journey to Karatu. We spent our time soaking in Tanzania and FAME and filming the daily lives of the staff and patients there. We knew when people SAW the landscape, the buildings, and most importantly, the PEOPLE who have created this oasis of healthcare in rural Tanzania, they would be just as awed as we were by the work FAME is doing.”

— Hannah Bowman

Our heartfelt thanks to Hannah and Elliot for making this short video -- for managing to capture the essence of what FAME is accomplishing at FAME Medical in Karatu, Tanzania. We deeply appreciate their hard work, their dedication and their extraordinary gift for bringing our work home to YOU! Enjoy.

Hannah Bowman studied film at Western Kentucky University. After graduating, she moved to Los Angeles and began working at City Room Creative, editing web and special event videos, as well as working on White Horse Picture's most recent documentary, "A Faster Horse," which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival this spring.

Elliot Beckley studied music at Western Kentucky University and currently works in Kentucky as an Audio Engineer for First Baptist Church in Bowling Green, and for the Southern Kentucky Performing Arts Center.

Equipping our Doctors, Nurses & Leaders

We can’t talk about our Continuing Education Program at FAME without introducing Brad Snyder, our Clinical Education Coordinator. Brad joined our team in November 2014. A Family Practice Nurse Practitioner, Brad is a healthcare provider who is also a gifted educator. Having spent four years living in Rwanda and another couple of years in Burundi, Brad comes to us with a unique perspective and understanding. He is working closely with our senior doctors, nurses and volunteer specialists to develop a variety of training modules and meaningful learning experiences for our team. Brad is committed to making sure our educational programming is meeting the most pressing needs of our healthcare workers and the patients they serve. He is also spearheading a process that involves FAME’s clinical team leaders and specialist volunteers working together to create up-to-date, evidence-based protocols focused on the top 10 most common illnesses seen at FAME.

Trainings & Lectures so far this year:
Respiratory Infections
Asthma
Helping Babies Breather (HBB)
Prenatal Care & Shoulder Dystocia
Management 101
UTI/STD
Pylonephritis, PID, Prostatitis
Hypertension & Pregnancy
Advanced OB Nurse Training
Advanced Life Support in Obstetrics (ALSO)
Structured Operative Obstetrics (SOO)
Induction & Augmentation of Labor
GI: Endoscopy Training
Liver Function Tests
Common GI Complaints
Electronic Fetal Heart Monitoring
Supply Chain Management Systems
Pediatric Shock
LRTI
Constrictive Pericarditis
Pediatric Dehydration/Rehydration
Pre/Post Op Consideration for C-section
Diagnosis & Treatment of Abdominal Complaints

by Volunteer Nurse Chana Schaffer

At the end of February a seemingly delicate, extremely premature baby boy was brought to FAME. He was hanging on to life by a thread when he arrived, and we weren’t sure if he would make it through the night. We supported him with warmth, oxygen, intravenous sugar water and love.

With the help of his amazing mother, our nurses and doctors helped Godbless Joseph (GBJ) to grow and thrive. After he survived that challenging first night, we all recognized that this little one had a lot of fight in him. He may have appeared physically weak, but he was drawing strength from somewhere.

Initially GBJ required an incubator to maintain his body temperature. We gave him sugar water through an IV, and then progressed to using a feeding tube that went into his nose and down to his stomach. His mother was by his side always. Even when she couldn’t hold him, she talked to him, touched him in the incubator, and played him music. Maybe it was her strength and continuous love and support that kept him fighting to live.

FAME Volunteer Pediatrician Dr. Verena Moreno with Godbless Joseph and his mother

Our not so delicate miracle baby boy went home with his mama just over a week ago! He was cared for at FAME for four weeks.  When he arrived he weighed less than 2 pounds (800 grams), mostly skin and bones. On discharge day he weighed almost 4.4 pounds! Godbless Joseph astounded us all. On the day he went home he was wrapped in a colorful kanga and breastfeeding in his mother’s arms. All the tubes and supportive devices were gone, leaving a tiny, yet incredibly resilient babe.