Tanzania is a country of forty million people belonging to more than a hundred different tribes and speaking a hundred and twenty seven languages. It is also a favourite destination for honeymooners eager to share the unforgettable experience of a safari in the Serengeti, snorkelling in the crystalline waters of Zanzibar and climbing Mount Kilimanjaro with a local guide. In fact, the largest albino community in Africa is concentrated on the slopes of Kilimanjaro.
The Tanzanian government has found it necessary to set up special centres to protect people with albinism who have had to flee their villages for fear of being butchered by traffickers in human bodies selling their limbs and organs to witch doctors to prepare their ‘prized’ good luck potions. However, the real killer they face every day is the sun, which consumes their lives, causing albinos to develop skin cancer before the age of thirty if they are not properly protected.
The first part of this project is a visual account of everyday life in the Kabanga refuge, where the Spanish NGO AIPC Pandora is engaged in a social work project to foster awareness and provide support to the albino community.
The second part describes the work of the Spanish doctors, health workers and pharmacists Spaniards in collaboration with local institutions in the Regional Dermatologic Training Centre (RDTC) at Moshi Hospital to combat both the discrimination and the skin cancer from which people with albinism suffer. They do this through prevention, promoting awareness, training and surgical interventions, supported by the NGO África Directo with direct actions such as contributing to the Kilisun project, which consists primarily in the sustainable manufacture of sunscreens for these people.
17 junio, 2018
