What an amazing gift the Mission Fund has been for the patients of Makiungu Hospital in Tanzania! They have put a new face on our hospital, founded 57 years ago in a remote desert area.

They came this year for the second time running, a group of 29 enthusiastic and hard-working fellow countrymen and women who made me proud to be Maltese.

Thanks to the attractive two-storey hostel they built for us last year, I can now invite much-needed doctors, nurses, radiographers and physiotherapists to work here. There is a shortage of qualified staff all over the country, and they cannot be persuaded to come to this deprived area, where we serve the real poor, unless they have adequate accommodation.

This year, the Mission Fund made possible the building of an extension to the overcrowded maternity ward; through them, Tektraco Ltd, celebrating their 25th anniversary, provided our hospital with piped oxygen for all the wards and operating theatres.

The group visited the neighbouring centre for children with disabilities and gave them 14 beautiful wheelchairs donated by the Maltese people. A large number of tricycles for polio victims was donated at Mwanza, hundreds of kilometres from our parish.

The Mission Fund has sent four containers with precious equipment and various other supplies over the past two years.

This year the items included a complete playing field for the waiting children, prepared by the students of Mcast, and quickly set up by the visiting group. The children love it, and at least we are getting fewer casualties from children climbing and swinging off insecure trees, as they used to have to do before.

Wherever the group saw a need, they quickly rose to fill it, and the patients loved to see these visitors with their sleeves rolled up, communicating with them in simple Swahili, bringing them hope and comfort.

I join my MMM Sisters, staff and patients, in saying asanteni sana (thank you all) and karibuni tena (welcome back) to the Mission Fund group and all who supported them.