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Govt pledges CSO support
2008-07-20 11:29:37
By Correspondent Nasser Kigwangallah
The government values contributions of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), the donor community and other stakeholders in health delivery services sector and will continue working with them to enable people get the services they required.
The Acting Director of Hospital services, Charles Masambu, said when inaugurating a three-day orientation for mammography machines training for doctors in Dar es Salaam this week that such contribution helped to deliver services to people in need.
The training has been jointly organised by Medical Women Association of Tanzania (MEWATA) in collaboration with Ocean Road Cancer Institute (ORCI) and the East Africa Breast Cancer Project.
Masambu congratulated MEWATA on spearheading breast cancer screening campaign that has reached a number of people in rural and urban areas in the country, stressing: ``I must recognise that the campaign has been a good advocacy for keeping the agenda of breast cancer high within the country which has also managed to convince people and the donor community to come forward and donate generously towards this noble endeavour.``
Five mammography machines have been donated by East Africa Breast Cancer Project of the United States which has offered five-day training for seven Tanzanian health officials in the US on screening breasts and reading results from the machines accurately.
The project`s representative, James Parkinson, said his organisation and Globus Relief International have donated eleven mammography machines worth 44m/- to Tanzanian hospitals through MEWATA initiatives for screening breast cancers.
The five machines that have arrived have been donated to Ocean Road Cancer Institute, Amana Hospital, Tumbi Hospital in Kibaha, Mount Meru Hospital in Arusha and Sekou Toure Hospital in Mwanza while the pending ones would be sent to Kigoma, Mbeya and other government hospitals in the country.
MEWATA Acting Chairperson Dr. Flora Rwakatare said her organisation would continue seeking support from the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, the donor community and NGOs in carrying out its activities and the fight against breast cancer.
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