The hands that heal
In Tanzania, more than 13% of the population lives with a disability that affects daily life. Yet most children can’t access the care they need because there’s a 50% shortage in healthcare workers, and only about 400 specialist surgeons to serve a country of over 60 million people.
That’s why Dr Makanza is extraordinary.
In a landscape where specialist care is so scarce, he is trained in both general orthopaedics and trauma.
He began treating our skeletal fluorosis and osteomyelitis patients, and through this partnership he had the chance to learn directly from visiting surgeons with experience in complex conditions like clubfoot in walking age.
Now that Dr. Makanza is an expert in these procedures, we are no longer dependent on visiting surgeons — allowing us to treat more children, more consistently.
He has become our main consultant orthopaedic surgeon, and his work has changed the lives of countless children.
What he loves about the Kafika House model is that his patients don’t get lost to follow-up.
Because they stay with us until they’ve fully recovered, we can take them back and forth to hospital as needed – and he can visit them at Kafika House to make sure his careful work is healing as it should.