Vision, Mission, Values
Vision
Mission
- Modeling low-cost, high-impact, evidence-based, compassionate care for newborns and children while demonstrating practices that can be replicated in hospitals across Africa.
- Reducing preventable newborn and child deaths while promoting healthy growth, nutrition, and early childhood development.
- Improving newborn and pediatric care across Africa through research and clinical innovation.
- Equipping and empowering African clinicians with the skills and knowledge they need.
- Investing in African healthcare leaders, we are helping create a future where every child has the chance to grow, learn, and flourish.
Values
We strive to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God as we adopt the following core values:
- Excellence: Children deserve healthcare that adopts the highest standards of care.
- Compassion: Offering medical care with kindness and respect, seeking to both understand and alleviate suffering.
- Education: Teaching and mentoring doctors and nurses, investing in families and communities in the care of their children.
- Integrity: Practicing honesty with others and ourselves, doing what we say and saying what we do.
- Collaboration: We work best when we understand everyone has equal value, listening and learning from each other in our communities.
- Equity: Every child deserves quality care regardless of gender, income, tribe, or religion.
Our Work
Advancing Child Healthcare in Africa
Each year, over 3 million newborn and stillborn children are lost worldwide—many in Sub-Saharan Africa, where limited resources and preventable complications make survival difficult. In Tanzania, newborn deaths accounted for a third of all child mortality, yet many went unrecorded, hiding the true scale of the crisis.
Our aim has always been to change this narrative. Most notably, Dr. Swanson and his Tanzanian colleagues made dramatic improvements in the NICU setting at Arusha Lutheran Medical Center using evidence – based, innovative models of neonatal care appropriate from limited income settings. More than 90% of all babies including extremely premature babies weighing less than 2.2 pounds or 1,000 grams now survive in this NICU setting.
Delivering Clinical Care
1. Delivering low-cost, high impact neonatology services of premature and hospitalized newborns in our partner NICUs:
- Arusha Lutheran Medical Centre (ALMC) NICU.
- Kivulini Hospital / Maternity Africa NICU (providing ICHA physicians).
- Potential new hospital relationships ICHA is fostering.
2. Providing specialty outpatient and inpatient pediatric care through the:
- Arusha Pediatric & Maternity Centre (APMC) – a first ever dedicated specialty centre for outpatient care of infants, children, adolescents, and pregnant women.
- Arusha Lutheran Medical Centre (ALMC) pediatric ward and clinics.
Providing Specialized Clinical Training
3. Mentoring doctors and nurses in pediatrics
- 7 Tanzanian doctors and 20 NICU nurses are currently supported by ICHA.
- 4 doctors in international residency programs (Kenya, South Africa, USA) that ICHA has helped reach this stage of training.
- Teaching at Pediatric Association of Tanzania and other venues.
4. Training NICU physicians & nurses through Tiny Feet Big Steps (TFBS) Neonatology Conferences to care for premature and critically ill babies.
- Uniquely co-training physicians and nurses, with a strong emphasis on innovation, clinical proficiency, and actionable healthcare strategies.
- Leading the largest African Neonatology Conference in Arusha, Tanzania.
- Expanded to Ethiopia, Dec. 2025; Ghana and Uganda in 2026.
- Resourcing medical staff with our Every Breath Counts Manual of Neonatal Care & Drug Doses, 3rd Ed: a 440-page neonatal care handbook offering evidence-based protocols, drug dosing, and NICU procedures for low-resource settings. It’s been distributed to nearly 250 hospitals across 25 African countries, serving as a key training tool to improve newborn survival.
