Each year the Aesthetic Skin Clinic supports a charity. We are always looking for something that will change lives and make a sustainable difference. Dr Curran says ‘’Sometimes patients say to me that they feel guilty about having treatments and are delighted to know that they are contributing to something really special.’’

This year we are working with The Healthxchange Pharmacy in conjunction with the Tumaini Charity, to put to good use your contribution to our success, training dispensers and building village dispensaries in one of the poorest parts of Africa, Tanzania, thus giving thousands of underprivileged people access to vital healthcare for the first time. Most of the students are orphans themselves and will come back to the villages where they have grown up, bringing education, medical help and hopefully inspiring a whole new generation to be motivated to seek further education.

Tumaini workers assess specific needs in orphan families and initially supply food needs, blankets, grain etc; they have a programme to re-build derelict family-houses and support establishing “chekacheas”, nursery schools, for younger orphans, encouraging churches to set them up and helping equip them, then the older children are freed to go to school, knowing that the younger children are safe, while the young ones can be given the stimulation of early education.

Secondary Schools are all fee-paying, but if a child passes their 11 Plus with a high enough mark, they are entitled to a place in a Government Secondary School, which costs about £35 per year…pricing it out of most families’ budgets: in 2011, the Tumaini charity supported 6,700 Tumaini orphans to go to Government Secondary School – such Secondary Education is likely to lift the entire extended family out of poverty! As from 2012, the charity will have secured the funds to send 30 students who have achieved high passes at secondary school, to attend teacher-training college for a 2 year diploma qualification – the funding will be supplied as a student loan, so that we can keep funding 30 students every year from now on.

If you want to read more about the work that the Tumaini charity undertakes, then visit their website at http://www.tumainifund.org.uk/ to follow the difference you are making to the lives of these young people.