September 2025: Making Connections for Tanzania
There have been several exciting developments in our Tanzania 2026 plans!
NHTH has only been to Tanzania once so far, in 2021—we served with a group (some of whom are pictured here!) providing surgical repairs for children with congenital heart disease.
This was in partnership with the local organization One New Heart Tanzania. At that time, One New Heart Tanzania's focus was totally on children. One of their goals was to train surgeons, physicians, and nurses on how to safely provide these pediatric cardiology surgeries in Tanzania. Prior to this, children and their families had to wait to receive these life-saving surgeries until they were accepted by hospitals and surgical teams in other countries.
Anita was there with other nurses from the US to teach nurses at the bedside how to care for these children after their open-heart surgery or cardiac catheterization procedures. It was the first time some of these surgeries had ever been taught or done in Tanzania—which of course meant that the nurses responsible for post-op care were also doing first-of-its-kind work!
The team from 2021 has stayed in touch and earlier this year, the leaders of One New Heart Tanzania reached out to NHTH with a request. Their work is “growing up” to now also include adult cardiology with a focus on community health screenings and early intervention. They asked if a team from Nurses Heart to Heart could come to Tanzania to do the following:
Train nurses in the specifics of caring for adult cardiology patients
Train and assist nurses in community screenings for high blood pressure, diabetes, and other contributing factors of heart disease
Teach CPR in hospitals and nursing schools
We are so excited about this opportunity, and things have really taken off in our planning for this trip—exciting connections are being made!
One of the leaders of One New Heart Tanzania recently visited Atlanta and he and Anita were able to connect with several of Anita's faculty colleagues from Tanzania, Kenya, and Ghana. They were all eager to discuss possible collaborations.
And, even more exciting, Anita was one of 10 faculty members from Emory University invited to meet with the Tanzanian Ambassador to the United States and Mexico, H.E. Ambassador Elsie Sia Kanza (H.E. stands for "Her Excellency"), who was enthusiastic about investing in nursing education!
Each of these connections has the potential to become a meaningful and effective long-term partnership that will improve the work of nurses and the lives of their patients. It is such a gift when academic experts, clinical experts, and local and national experts come together for the good of nurses. And it's an exciting time to be serving in Tanzania!
We will keep you posted as plans for this summer 2026 trip continue to develop. Thank you for being with us in this!