About us

In the “Holy Year” 2000, the Poor Clare Sister, Mother Mary of the Holy Family, who came from India (Kerala) to Tanzania as a missionary for her Congregation in the 1950s, got the order of her community superiors to build a new monastery of the Sisters of St. Clare in the outskirts of Mwanza City, in the village of Nyang’hingi – at that time a settlement of few poor peasants’ families, now the densely inhabited Buganda Salehe Street in the Ward of Mkolani in Nyamagana District of Mwanza Municipality. She asked the German deacon, Thomas Brei, freshly ordained also in that same year, a friend, to help her with fund-raising for the construction of the proposed monastery. Major parts of the finance were raised from dioceses in Germany, MISSIO Munich and MISSIO Aachen and the Missionary Centre of the Franciscans. In the plans of the new Monastery of Our Lady of the Angels, a hall, called infirmary, was planned to house the sick and handicapped sisters for nursing care inside the cloister.

Ten years later, Thomas Brei came to Tanzania for good as a missionary-doctor sent by the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising / Germany, being trained in tropical medicine during an internship at Bugando Medical Centre in Mwanza in 2011/12. During this time, the idea grew in Mother Mary of the Holy Family and Father Thomas Brei to open the infirmary of the sisters for the diagnose, treatment and medical care also of the neighbouring people and inhabitants. Therefore, efforts were made to establish an outpatient-clinic in some buildings belonging to the Monastery. This clinic could be opened with the blessing of the former Archbishop of Mwanza, Most Reverend Jude Thaddaeus Ruwa’ichi OFM Cap, under the name “Poor Clare Infirmary” on the 1st of May 2015 – chiefly doctors and specialists from Bugando Medical Centre came for consultation hours in the Poor Clare Infirmary with the permission and consent of the former Director of Bugando Medical Centre, the urologist Professor Mteta. Permanent consultation and first-aid-service was rendered to the local community by clinical officers. In 2017 the Poor Clare Infirmary was registered as a General Specialized Clinic with the Private Hospitals Advisory Board (PHAB) of the Tanzanian ministry responsible for health; its name changed into “St. Clare Clinic”.

In December 2017, a Trust was erected and registered at the Registration Insolvency and Trusteeship Agency (RITA) for possessing and building up the St. Clare Clinic: The Founder Trustee is Father Thomas Brei and the plot-owners of the institution, the Poor Clare Sisters of the Monastery of Our Lady of the Angels, and different groups of German benefactors and capital-givers are represented in the Board of Trustees of “The Registered Trustees of St. Clare Clinic Foundation”. Today, this Trust is in the role of the capital-owner of both, movable and immovable assets of the St. Clare Hospital – and, on the other hand side, with the duty to continue improving, amplifying and backing-up the working-capital of the healthcare-institution by good-will donations from German benefactors.

One year later, at Christmas 2018, the St. Clare Clinic moved into the new buildings constructed in the meantime and had ample space and equipment, enough for applying to be a hospital; the new structures were blessed by the President of MISSIO Munich / Germany, Msgr. Wolfgang Huber on the 18th of March 2019. After a very difficult year of finishing-works and start-up-problems, the St. Clare General Specialized Clinic was re-launched on the 1st of January 2020 with a significantly fortified staff-body. Unfortunately, after only three months, the COVID19-crisis brought again major challenges.

The crisis and disorientation were mastered until the middle of the year 2020 and the medical, financial and organisation-wise situation stabilized since then. In September 2020 the St. Clare Clinic was declared to be a hospital and was registered as such by PHAB. The latest big step in the history of the ST. CLARE HOSPITAL was made on the 1st of April 2021: the newly established “St. Clare Foundation”, an all-Tanzanian non-government-organization, registered by the Registrar of the NGOs of the Tanzanian ministry responsible for health, community-development etc. took over the operation of the hospital; all human resources, the medical work in diagnostics, therapy and nursing, the accountancy and the public relations of the St. Clare Hospital are handled by the Tanzanian NGO St. Clare Foundation, to whom the Trust has entrusted the whole movable and unmovable capital of the hospital to operate the healthcare-services for the people in need.