Expectant mothers in rural Tanzania need a new maternity ward. Here’s how you can help

Help build a maternity ward for expectant mothers in rural Tanzania: LifeFunder

(LifeSiteNews) — Sister Dr. Mpeli Jacob Mwakyelu is the OB/GYN physician at Mwambani Mission Hospital in the Southern Highlands of southwestern Tanzania. She describes her practice not in statistics, but in distance.

“Sometimes we need to go far away more than 2 km to follow the woman for us to help their complications and solve their problem.”

She is not describing an exceptional event. She is describing what happens when the only referral hospital for 320,130 people across five districts has insufficient obstetric infrastructure to manage the complications that kill mothers. Mwambani Mission Hospital recorded 1,834 deliveries in 2025, on just 4 delivery beds. When those deliveries become emergencies, the gap between what is needed and what exists costs lives.

That is the reality Gregory Mitchell encountered when he made a site visit to Mwambani in July 2025. He had come to advance a project Caritas Veritate Missions had been developing for four years. What he found when he arrived changed the scope of what he felt called to do.

“We came to Mwambani thinking we were building a maternity waiting home. But once we stood in the hospital, saw the complications they were facing, and how often mothers arrived without access to surgical care, it became clear this was something more,” says Mitchell, Founder and Executive Director of of LiftLife Global Health and Caritas Veritate Missions.

“The Mwambani OB/GYN Labor and Delivery Center wasn’t an expansion of our plans — it was a response to what we encountered.”

What Mitchell and his fellow co-founders of LiftLife Global Health — Melissa Beth Mitchell, PhD, and Chantel Pilet — walked away with was a commitment: to raise $5 million over three years to build a WHO-compliant OB/GYN Labor and Delivery Center at Mwambani, giving the hospital the emergency obstetric capacity it needs, in service of a community that has never been abandoned.

A hospital built by faith, sustained by fidelity

Mwambani Mission Hospital was built in 1968 by the Sisters of Denekamp — a congregation of Dutch Franciscan Sisters who came to one of the most remote corners of Tanzania’s Southern Highlands in the southwestern part of the country and built something that has outlasted their direct presence. The Archdiocese of Mbeya holds the hospital in stewardship today. It is still the only referral hospital for 320,130 people across five districts. It is still doing the work it was built to do — with far less than it needs.

Caritas Veritate Missions arrived in that tradition, not outside it. Over four years of engagement, the organization built a chapel on the hospital grounds — now used daily by the sisters in their prayer and ministry. That chapel is the first completed project. It is proof of a relationship, proof of execution, and proof of intent.

LiftLife Global Health is the next chapter — a focused initiative anchored in Catholic social teaching, created specifically to carry this work to a scale that matches the need.

The surgeon-priest: Father Gilbert Sanga

Father Gilbert Sanga is the Chief Surgeon at Mwambani Mission Hospital — a priest who serves his community through both sacrament and scalpel. His vocation is not divided between the spiritual and the physical; it is integrated in the way the Church has always understood medicine: as a participation in the healing mission of Christ. He sees, every week, what the hospital can do and what it cannot.

“We refer patient with prematurity, birth asphyxia, severe anemia in pregnancy, and other risk patients due to lack of the above mentioned needs,” he says. “The center would change the situation because there will be more rooms for delivery, it will reduce congestion of post caesarean section patient, congestion of post normal vaginal delivery care and more rooms for space for neonatal care which will eventually reduce neonatal sepsis maternity complication and hence reduction of neonatal and maternal death.”

The Archdiocese of Mbeya

Archbishop Gervas John Mwasikwabhila Nyaisonga, archbishop of Mbeya, has given his formal support to the project and has approved the architectural plans for the new center. The Archdiocese of Mbeya has held stewardship of Mwambani Mission Hospital since the Sisters of Denekamp entrusted it to the local church — and it is under that same episcopal authority that this project moves forward, rooted in the Franciscan charism that built the hospital in the first place.

“Due to its peripheral and geographically challenging location, the hospital faces significant limitations in handling obstetric and neonatal emergencies. Many mothers and infants lose their lives on the long journey to reach the Mbeya Zonal Referral Hospital for specialized care,” says Archbishop Nyaisonga. “It is therefore urgent and essential to construct and equip a Maternal and Newborn Care Unit at Mwambani Hospital, a center capable of managing deliveries, complications and emergency referrals locally.”

The Mwambani OB/GYN Labor and Delivery Center

The foundation of the new building has already been laid — witnessed by Gregory Mitchell during his July 2025 visit to Mwambani. Father Gilbert Sanga and his colleagues began construction, then stopped for lack of funds. What LiftLife and the Archdiocese of Mbeya are building together is already in the ground, waiting to rise.

Architectural plans have been drawn by Tanzania’s Presidential Office, Regional Administration and Local Government — the government’s own architectural office in Dodoma — to the standard design for council-level hospitals. The 1,041-square-meter ground-floor plan is drawn at scale 1:100 and has been formally approved by the Archdiocese of Mbeya.

The planned center will include:

• 20-bed Labor and Delivery Center with dedicated delivery suites
• Surgical theaters for emergency caesarean section and obstetric procedures
• Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU)
• Maternity waiting home for high-risk patients
• Postpartum ward, triage bay, pharmacy, and emergency bay
• Chapel for pastoral care — integral to the Franciscan heritage of the hospital
• Solar power and clean water infrastructure
• Full compliance with WHO Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care (EmONC) standards

Projected five-year outcomes include 2,336 deliveries annually, a 40 to 60 percent reduction in maternal mortality for the catchment population, up to a 70 percent improvement in neonatal survival, and training for 50 or more midwives per year.

The $5 million campaign is in active fundraising. LiftLife welcomes partnerships from faith-based institutions, Catholic foundations, diocesan development offices, and individual donors who share the conviction that every mother deserves care that matches her dignity.

Financial stewardship

Dr. E. Lance McCarthy is a faith-based economist, Harvard lecturer, and advisor to the White House Task Force on Economic Conversion. His formal role as Economic Advisor to LiftLife Global Health ensures that the capital strategy, institutional partnerships, and long-term funding framework for this project are grounded in rigorous financial expertise.

“As Economic Advisor, my responsibility is to build the financial framework, strategic partnerships, and international support necessary to fully fund and sustain this hospital,” he says. “No woman should lose her life giving birth due to a lack of access to quality care. This $5 million campaign is not simply about constructing a building — it is about saving lives and creating generational impact.”

About LiftLife Global Health and Caritas Veritate Missions

LiftLife Global Health is the dedicated maternal health initiative of Caritas Veritate Missions, Inc. (formerly St. Bryce Missions), a Louisiana-registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit headquartered in Slidell, Louisiana. Caritas Veritate Missions has maintained documented engagement with Mwambani Mission Hospital and its community for more than four years.

Help build a maternity ward for expectant mothers in rural Tanzania: LifeFunder