A mother who died in her twenties in 2004 from a treatable disease like HIV/AIDS leaving behind 3 children, one of them died a bit later at the age of 3 in our house telling her older sister that she should not cry. This woman was a "star" interviewed in an award winning documentary made by an African journalist. Later on she was forgotten. Her death was not worth a single word in the media. She had served her purpose?

More than 2 years have passed since the South Central Diocese of the Lutheran Church of Tanzania closed a well working HIV/AIDS clinic by the use of force. Following reports from Tanzania many more people unnecessarily died since.Though some of the patients in Bulongwa still get their life saving ARVs (AIDS drugs), monitoring, clinical management and new patients uptake never reached the same quality and level of the times before the lock out.

This seems now to be proven by a Swedish study proposing things which had already been in place before the lock out (e.g. proper cd4 and liver function monitoring and management, as the plan to do a mobile clinic to reach out to the villages on a regular basis).

The former care and treatment program was forcefully expelled by the diocese (SCD/ELCT). The move followed the announcement of local PLWAH (people living with HIV/AIDS) and the local community to protest against the embezzlements of donor and government money by the SCD - Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania (ELCT) which was known since years by donor missions and ELCT headquarters in Arusha. These monies were originally given for the development of the community including the improvement of medical treatment and care.

I feel like that: If the peasant opens his mouth, a stealing church closes his clinic and let him die and nobody from ELCT, the partnering mission agencies, the Lutheran World Federation in Geneva, the Minister of Health, the former Prime Minister - all of them Lutheran believers and/or Christians found it worth to say a single word of regret, solidarity or apology to the poor. Anyway, donor agenices went on collecting money in the name of the poor in Tanzania!

FOR WHAT? Can they prove without any doubt, that the funds were and are used correctly?

More than ever: I believe that the responsible officers from the donors in Europe, who are also represented in decision making and controlling boards in Tanzania, must resign and the financial accounts in Europe and Tanzania must be fully disclosed and those responsible for thefts and embezzlements or the lack of controll mechanisms in Tanzania or in other countries must be held accountable for damaging societies in developing countries through money given by well meaning small donors, who thought to help the poor and frequently achieved the opposite.