16 April 2025

CNWL's Partnership Team have had the pleasure of hosting four guests from Mirembe National Mental Health Hospital in Tanzania over the past six weeks. The team, made up of Rachel (Director of nursing) Neema (Senior Nursing Officer) Rose (Counselling Psychologist) and Ally (Occupational Therapist) (pictured below), were graciously funded by the Commonwealth Professional Fellowship Programme.  

Tariro Gumbo, Senior Community Partnerships and Engagement Lead, said:

“This partnership is beneficial to both Mirembe and CNWL. It's a shared learning experience. The purpose of their visit is: 

  • To gain some insight into the way CNWL provides community-based mental health and addictions services. 

  • To share innovative ways of delivering Mental Health Services, enhancing the services we provide. 

  • To share insight on the impact of culture, religion and beliefs on Mental health. 

I am impressed with all my CNWL colleagues and their efforts to support this fellowship program.”   

We hope our Mirembe partners can take this knowledge back home to Tanzania to contribute to a long-term project of developing community-oriented services across Tanzania.  

In Tanzania about 65% of the population live in remote rural areas. Unfortunately, hospital-based care is only available in the cities of Dodoma and Dar es Salaam, meaning that mental health care is not easily accessible. 

Rose, Rachel, Neema and Ally have been spending time in several community teams, learning from them. They have also been sharing insights with CNWL staff, particularly regarding the impact of culture and societal norms on mental health. Their collective professional experience brings a vast amount of knowledge and expertise in innovative, culturally informed, practices and how religion, spirituality and beliefs have a bearing on diagnosing and treating mental health.  

CNWL colleagues have graciously hosted the partners within their services, and more questions and comments have come from this exciting visit. Some have formed connections with the aim to continue to form long-term co-mentoring relationships. 

The team, alongside CNWL colleagues, delivered a presentation on Wednesday 9 April at the Hope in the Community space, sharing insights into mental health care in Tanzania and their ideas for how their knowledge of CNWL’s approach to mental health care can be adopted and adapted to their home setting. A recording of this presentation is available here. 

At CNWL, we have as much to learn from our Tanzanian partners as they do from us, particularly in relation to caring for people from the diaspora and how to do more with less. This is reflected in the comments below from some CNWL colleagues that had the pleasure of working alongside Rachel and her team: 

“I must say it was an eye opener” 

“Our main takeaway was the cultural differences and how we can all support each other on a more international basis when developing and improving our healthcare services”. 

“A place similar or like MHCAS is not currently available to them. I think we need to be mindful of this fact when admitting patients from other countries, that the concept of our community services may feel foreign to them and that some time should be spent explaining the aim and benefits, should they be referred to these services”. 

“Rachel and the rest of the team expressed that access to professional support is a last resort, while using traditional remedies such as rituals, religion, exorcism and sacrifices to appease gods is often a first resort; people in Tanzania sometimes feel their gods are angry hence people are afflicted with mental  health.”

Their visit ended with a presentation held in front of CNWL visitors detailing their visit and providing more information about Mirembe hospital and its progress.  

For more information please contact: Tariro Gumbo, Senior Community Partnerships and Engagement Lead: tariro.gumbo@nhs.net, and Chris Bumstead, International Healthcare Partnerships Coordinator: c.bumstead@nhs.net.