Birth Center
Every woman deserves a safe, dignified place to give birth.
Traditionally, women in Dumbeta Ward gave birth at home in mud huts without running water, attended by lay midwives and family members. Emergency medical care was unavailable, and maternal and perinatal mortality rates were high. Over the past twenty-five years, the opening of thousands of medical dispensaries across rural Tanzania—combined with a national public health campaign promoting facility-based births—has led to a steady decline in home deliveries. With trained health professionals, access to clean water, and improved sanitation, pregnancy outcomes have improved dramatically. Neonatal deaths have fallen by nearly 50 percent and maternal deaths by approximately 70 percent.
When Dumbeta Dispensary opened in 2008 women began giving birth in its two exam rooms. The numbers of infants being born at the facility increased significantly after the Rafiki Village Project completed housing for the medical staff in 2019, making 24/7 care possible. While the dispensary provided a safer and more sanitary environment than home births, conditions remained far from ideal. Laboring women often shared exam rooms, sometimes delivering babies while patients received routine medical care in the same room. Due to a lack of beds and space, mothers and newborns were routinely sent home within one or two hours of delivery—well short of the World Health Organization’s recommendation that they be observed for at least 24 hours after birth.
At the March 2022 community meeting, residents identified the need for a dedicated maternity ward as a top priority. The community raised 10 percent of the construction costs, with the remaining funds generously provided by donors. In November 2023 a dedicated birth center opened adjacent to Dumbeta Dispensary.
The new, stand alone, birth center includes a delivery room, a labor room, and a post-partum mother-and-newborn room. Laboring mothers no longer give birth in crowded exam spaces, and mothers and infants are no longer sent home immediately after delivery. Instead, they now have a clean, private, and spacious environment in which to begin life together.
The new birth center is getting lots of use. In 2025 alone, 404 babies were safely delivered by Dumbeta Ward’s amazing medical team—each one welcomed into the world with the care, dignity, and safety every family deserves.
