Dr. Stella Mongella has been in Israel with Save a Child's Heart for a 2-year training-program advancing her skills as a pediatric cardiologist so she can help saving lives in her home country, the United Republic of Tanzania.
She was born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in 1982.
Both of her parents were civil servants, her father at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and her mother at the Ministry of Education. Having started off as teachers, they worked very hard to advance themselves and instilled Stella a strong work ethic.
Stella always had a keen interest for science since primary school. Love for the sciences and a strong desire to help people led her to pursue Medecine.
Ten years ago, Stella completed her medical school at the Catholic University of Health and Allied Sciences (Bugando) in Mwanza, Tanzania and continued for post-graduate training in Pediatrics and Child Health.
She has been a pediatrician for the past six years.
"Children are very unique in how genuine they are in sickness and health. A sick child can be seen in how subdued they may become, but once that child is well, they're back to being active again. It's very rewarding to be able to help children be healthy and develop as they should." she said.
Stella found out about medical training program in Israel at the time when she was at the medical school, the head of Pediatrics at her University was a German neonatologist/cardiologist who had trained in Israel. He invited Save A Child's Heart to meet a young doctor, as a potential candidate to study Pediatric Cardiac Surgery. The young doctor impressed Save A Child's Heart and came to Israel to pursue a five-year program that made him Tanzania's first pediatric cardiac surgeon. This pediatric cardiac surgeon is Stella's husband, Dr. Godwin Godfrey Sharau.
Save A Child's Heart indeed proposes a unique training program since Israel is a medically-advanced country and working at Wolfson Medical Center allows a supervised, complete hands-on experience, unlike any other program. Stella sincerely enjoyed in Israel the learning atmosphere which is very open, allowing for one to gain the necessary clinical skills and knowledges.
Tanzania has 60 million people, and the birth-rate is about 2 million per year. The incidence for children being born with heart diseases is at 0.8%, so about 16,000 babies across Tanzania are born with heart conditions per year.
All these children and more rely on the sole Cardiac Hospital in Tanzania, the Jakaya Kikwete Cardiac Institute (JKCI) in Dar es Salaam, for diagnosis, treatment and follow-up.
Tanzania has a total of five pediatric cardiologists, one pediatric cardiac surgeon and one pediatric cardiac intensivist. The need for advancing pediatric cardiac care is huge. So the requisite to practice medicine in Tanzania highly motivates Stella. There is so much work to be done in the provision of care to children with cardiac conditions but also in training and mentoring other doctors to better recognize and manage these conditions as well.
Now this is the time for Dr. Stella Mongella to come back to her country, the United Republic of Tanzania, to get back to her husband, Godwin and their three children and to contribute in achieving her dearest dream: "That every Tanzanian child will get the timely cardiac care he needs to be able to return the smiles to his face and to his parents' faces."
Welcome back home Stella!