The department serves a number of 24 hospitals and 148 lower health facilities all across the country. These facilities are directly owned by the ELCT dioceses and the ELCT health department is there to support the sustainability of health care services in the ELCT health facilities and be a link within and between ELCT health facilities.
More than 90% of ELCT hospitals are located in rural areas where the general access to social services is a main problem. Because of that you can mostly find them to be the only facility available at that area and find the other after miles. 12 hospitals, facilities are in partnership with the Government operating as Council Designated hospitals (CDH), one at the national referral level and 2 at the level of regional referral hospitals. ELCT also has one mental hospital. The remand facilities including the some of the lower health facilities have also signed a service agreement with the Government to provide free services to pregnant women and the under-fives.
Through these health facilities, ELCT contribute 15% of health services provided in Tanzania.
External Partners and Stakeholders: Church of Sweden (CoS), Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), Bavaria Church, African Palliative Care association (APCA), Open society initiative of eastern Africa (OSIEA),USAID through PACT Tanzania.
Also; Lutheran World federation (LWF), Lutheran Mission Cooperation (LMC), Global health Ministries (GHM), Global partners in Care (GPIC) and different hospice partnerships.
Internal partners and stakeholders: The Government of Tanzania through MOHCDGEC and PO-RALG, Christian social services commission (CSSC), Tanzania Palliative Care Association (TPCA), Ocean road Cancer Institute (ORCI) and etc.
The ELCT health department is one of the departments under the social services and women works directorate of the church. As other organs in the ELCT hq, the department has four main roles which are; coordination, capacity building, Advocacy and facilitation. The department implement these roles in the ELCT health facilities and in different health programs and projects implemented by the department in different places.
This program started officially in 2004 with the support from Evangelical Lutheran church in America (ELCA), then in 2007, the new grant came from USAID under a project called CHAT project scaling up the services to more facilities and after the project phased out the scale up continued to more other facility from 13 to 23 hospitals and 4 lower health facilities providing Palliative care services.
This program is implemented in 22 ELCT hospitals and 5 Lower health facilities. It has main four areas abbreviated FAYMA; Family planning, Youth friendly services, Male involvement and Assessment and management of reproductive health issues including but not limited to cervical cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer and STIs.
Barefoot quality is defined by the ELCT health department as quality in the eye of common man. It is designed to strengthen not only the provision of quality health care to the clients but also Christian values and ethics in the provision of care.
Shortage of staff in ELCT hospitals is one of the very big challenges faced at the moment. Most of ELCT hospitals are located in remote areas.
The project is placed under the clinic and community based sexual reproductive health and rights (CCBSRHR) program which is among the programs under ELCT health department. Other programs are Palliative and home based Care, Quality of care and human resource for health.
The project aims to easy the access to SRHR information, education and services among adolescents and youth in 10 Districts of Tanzania through 10 ELCT hospitals located in those places. The project will be scaled up to other places upon the availability of funds using the experience gain from the piloted areas.
