Solar panel installations in delivery rooms and maternity wards have an immediate impact.

This project began with an early morning message received from nurse Lucy in Mpanga health clinic. She had just arrived home at 2am after delivering a baby at the clinic. The clinic has no grid electricity (nor does the village) and the small solar system that we had installed previously (as part of working with the village to finish the building of the clinic in 2018) had apparently not charged enough during the day.

The delivery room's solar light soon gave out and Lucy’s light was reduced to just her mobile phone. That soon gave out too and the rest took place in the dark of night. Lucy vividly related her fear of dropping the baby. Fortunately, due to her great care, the birth was successful.

But it was abundantly clear that newborn babies and their mothers are repeatedly endangered by this situation. (Although many villages now have grid electricity, blackouts are very frequent, even predictable on specific days.)

Our solution has been to install a dedicated solar system in the delivery rooms and maternity wards of the health clinics. We have now almost achieved our goal of installing a system in every health clinic in the Usambara Mountains—sixty-plus clinics in total. Now we will move to the Bagamoyo district to achieve the same, with at least 21 health clinics already listed.