Handover ceremony at the Dabalo Health Centre in Chamwino on 9 May 2023

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“Realizing Universal Access to Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights”
Handover ceremony, Dabalo Health Centre, Chamwino, 9 May 2023

[Protocol]

Ladies and Gentlemen, habari za mchana

It is my pleasure to be here today at the handover ceremony of the Dabalo Health Centre.

Honourable Minister, thank you for your leadership and dedication to the project from you personally, from PO-RALG and from the Government of the United Republic of Tanzania. With your commitment, the Dabalo Heath Centre will continue to make a significant impact on the lives of the people served.

Thank you, Mark Bryan Schreiner, UNFPA Country Representative, for all the nice words, and to you and to your team for organising this wonderful event. We are proud to have been a part of this project that has increased access to sexual and reproductive health services and made such a positive impact on tens of thousands of lives already and on thousands more to come. This facility will be an important part of the legacy of the project.

Across the globe, and certainly also in Tanzania, Denmark has a long-standing partnership with UNFPA, and we are delighted to support its efforts to improve the lives of women and young people, especially girls, around the world. Our cooperation is based on a shared commitment to promote human rights, gender equality, and SRHR.

Therefore, we are very happy to be part of this project that supports universal access to sexual and reproductive health in rural Tanzania, and to support the improvement of maternal and newborn care. The Dabalo Health Centre is only one of the project’s many results. The project strengthens reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health – not only in Chamwino, but in all of Dodoma, in Simiyu and in Zanzibar. It is truly good to now see our plans now coming to fruition.

Our combined efforts in this particular project goes hand in hand with the Danish long-term commitment to strengthening primary health care in Tanzania.

Primary health care is the backbone of any healthcare system, and it plays a critical role in keeping the population healthy. This is why the Danish Embassy has supported the Health Basket Fund for more than two decades. Together with other donors - including UNFPA - and the Government of Tanzania –including PO-RALG. We very much appreciate this important cooperation, which enables us to channel funding directly to more than 6.600 primary health facilities, including the Dabalo Health Centre, and to increase the provision of quality primary health care services.

In Tanzania, 22% of young women, aged 15-19, have been pregnant. If fertility remains at this level, every woman will be pregnant almost five times. Maternal mortality in Tanzania causes 21% of all female deaths [TDHS2016]. So being pregnant poses a risk. Health system strengthening and improvement of the quality of and access to reproductive health services in Tanzania is therefore vital - literally. It saves lives of both mothers and newborns. It is that simple. So we are thrilled to see that the obstetric care and newborn facility has been equipped and renovated here at the Dabalo Health Centre.

Denmark has supported the Tanzanian health sector since 1996 in a number of ways; through the public health sector, public-private partnerships, multilateral funding, and through support to think thanks, civil society, and to research. Each part is important, and they complement each other. We see one example here today. Another is how research can improve and qualify policies and interventions, and how partners such as CCBRT and Marie Stopes Tanzania are cooperating with the public health sector in outreach activities, training public health personnel and capacity building.

Collaboration is crucial for advancing the health system, SRHR and addressing the complex challenges that we meet in real life. By working together, these different avenues of support and diverse partnerships can leverage unique perspectives and resources to achieve a greater impact and improve the health and wellbeing of all Tanzanians.

In closing, I would again like to express my gratitude to everyone who has worked tirelessly to make the expansion of the Dabalo Health Centre a reality. I am confident that it will make a significant difference to the lives of the people in the community.