Tanzanian at heart: Christine fights for the country’s health equity from afar

Christine Lasway was born and raised in Dar es Salaam, but for the last 24 years, the United States of America has been her primary residence, which is nearly half her life.

She became part of the Tanzanian Diaspora community in her twenties. Her initial plan was to pursue a master’s degree in global health and development, and then return to Tanzania.

During the late 1990s and early 2000s, the aids pandemic was ravaging communities across Africa, and Christine wanted to be part of the health practitioners at the forefront of the fight against HIV/AIDS. So her path for further studies in the US was public health.

“My first degree was on pharmaceutical development, and my goal was to bring medication to the world, particularly Tanzania, on HIV/aids’’ she said.

Though her initial plan was not to stay in the US longer than her studies required, her mother played a role in convincing her to remain, doing all she could to have her stay in the US.

She relatively easily immersed herself in the American lifestyle without much struggle, though it’s common for most Africans to take a while to adjust to American life.

Christine was already exposed to it through watching television and reading books, and her frequent travel outside Tanzania before going to America also helped her understand and adapt to foreign cultures easily.

The only time she felt the cultural shock was when she became a mother, and unlike in Africa, where communal support is readily available, Christine quickly realised that it was upon her to take care of her kids. “Being the highly ambitious person I am, the responsibility of being a mother and working was a difficult balance to achieve,” she recalls.

Tanzania was always on the back of her mind; she always wanted to go back, and that struggle between living the American dream or serving Tanzania was always there. Her saving grace was that her work in global health availed her of many opportunities to work with Tanzania. “So I have always been connected to my home country; there was even a time I went back to Tanzania and worked for four years,” she revealed. In her four years in Tanzania, she worked with FHI 360, an American international NGO that has been operational in Tanzania for a while. Her responsibility was to establish a research department in the country’s office, with her focus areas being reproductive health and maternal and child health.

For more than 20 years, Christine’s dedication to public health has seen her play a vital role in bringing medication not only to Tanzania but to the whole world.

“I was the first proposal manager for the USAID programme to fund HIV/aids supply chain,” she said. Her passion and dedication was to bring HIV medication to Tanzania. The enormous task that involved different organisations was a success that Christine looks back on as her proud accomplishment for Tanzania. Though she didn’t get to work on HIV-related projects as she would have liked, her achievements in Tanzania speak volumes. “First and foremost, I always look at myself as an ambassador for Tanzania. I am always looking out for Tanzania, and in my position, I am always channelling funds to Tanzania and developing new projects,” she explained.

When she was working for FHI 360, Tanzania was not one of the countries selected for funding on the project by USAID, but she made sure that it was included.

Christine has over time pioneered innovations that have been used in the country, like the mobile for rural reproductive health named M4RH system that provides basic information about the full range of short-acting and long-acting contraceptive methods and addresses common misconceptions. The programme was so successful in Tanzania that it was adopted by other countries.

The programme is still in operation to this day. “At that time, I was interested in digital interventions, for we launched three digital interventions; another project was for health providers to make sure they were adhering to health standards, and another one was on accountability for health services,” she elaborated.

Looking back to more than two decades in the US, Christine is content that the move was worth all the effort and sacrifices; her exposure and education in the United States provided her with the skills that saw her play a vital role in Tanzania’s health sector.

The general community is mostly in rural areas where health centres are in dire need of improved services and funding, plus the right information to dispel the misconceptions.

The programmes that Christine was involved in have played a big role in the provision of better health services. Christine is part of the unsung heroes; without reading this article, most people wouldn’t even know who she is. But this Tanzanian diaspora is proud to have served her country.

“As long as I continue to serve Tanzania, for me, it’s worth it,” she said. “I think there is a role for Tanzanians in the diaspora; us being outside the country, there is a purpose as long as we give back to the country; as long as we do that, then being outside the country is highly relevant,” she added.

For most Tanzanians, due to their work or family obligations, they had to be naturalised and become American citizens. Still, Christine wasn’t subjected to that and has always maintained her Tanzanian citizenship; “the whole notion of not having my Tanzanian passport is inconceivable to me,” she emphasised.

“Tanzania comes first and second,” she said. Christine is privileged to travel the world as part of her work requirement and whenever she is at the airport, she makes sure that her Tanzanian passport is visible for everyone to see.

 “I am a patriot, and I will always remain a Tanzanian,” she concluded.