Jambo Tanzania

Albert with a group of youths in Nzega, Tanzania

I recently visited a town called Nzega in northern Tanzania and met a group of small-scale gold miners. What they told me is typical of what happens in many other mining communities in Tanzania and helps explain why HIV & AIDS is such a problem in my country.

Nzega is located near a large open pit gold mine called Golden Pride, owned and operated by an Australian mining company, Resolute Mining. Many small scale miners operate outside of Golden Pride’s private mining area, searching for scraps of gold to sell.

There are an estimated one million small scale miners in Tanzania, in a country of 40 million.

The men and women I met were of varying ages, but all were covered in dust and carried forced smiles. They put their lives at risk every day by touching the mercury they use to extract the gold. Mercury is highly toxic and can get into your lungs, brain, heart and kidney – causing mercury poisoning.

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Small Miners welcoming Tundu Lisu, the Advocates assisting them to demand their right

Small scale miners surrounding an Australian mining company in Nzega, welcoming the lawyer assisting them to demand their compensation from Australia and Tanzanian Government following their eviction from the area to let the giant Australian Mining Company to conduct mining activities

The forcity with which malaria still wreaking havoc in many parts of Tanzania raises more questions than answers.

The disease remain the major killer in the country, despite various local and international initiatives to combat it,for many years taming malaria is one of Tanzania’s main priorities, in fact Tanzania is among African countries that have been quite aggressive in implementing malaria prevention and treatment programmes.

The Tanzania National Malaria Control programme is rated among the most effective, having been provided with sufficient anti-malarial drugs since 2006.

Despite all these effort the disease still kills mores more than 100,000 infants and attacks between 16 and 18 million people countrywide each year, this is not acceptable!

In Tanzania Zanzibar,malaria deaths has been cut by 90% ,thanks to large- scale prevention, treatment and care programmes, however on the mainland Tanzania the problem seems to be insurmountable . It is a pity that the mainland can not emulate Zanzibar success.

This is so yet the people even in the remotest areas, easily access and take antimalarial drugs frequently. But malaria parasites are becoming resistant  to drugs. This is what has forced the Tanzania Ministry of health and social  welfare to change the first line of choice of antimalarial time and again.

It is high time we re-examine our strategies to curb the malaria deaths, we need to seriously target mosquito-breeding grounds and decimate the insects before they  wipe us out

can someone help on this please!