The deceased general practitioner Frans Senff from Assen left part of his inheritance to a small hospital in Tanzania. Tropical doctor Sieuwke Hartmans from the Frisian Aldeboarn continues his work there. This week she comes to Assen to pick up baby hats.
After his 50th birthday, Frans Senff traveled to the north of Tanzania twice a year for seven weeks as a volunteer. More precisely, to the Endulen Hospital in the Nogongoro district in the famous Serengeti National Park, near the city of Arusha. More than 90,000 people in the area, mainly Masai, are completely dependent on the hospital with 110 beds for medical care.
Senff worked long days in Africa. He had obtained his pilot’s license at the flying club at the airport in Eelde and flew with small planes to remote mission posts in Tanzania to provide medical assistance. “When people heard the plane, they flocked to the aid station. Some walked over it for two days,” says Henk Linstra, secretary of the Chagos foundation, which manages Senff’s donations to the hospital. Senff gave lectures in the North, among other things, and raised money with it.
Last trip
On March 10, 2021, Frans Senff returned from what would later turn out to be his last trip to Tanzania. Two weeks later he was hospitalized in Assen with corona, where he died on April 20 at the age of 67. During his funeral, 10,000 euros were collected for the foundation. Linstra: ,,We still transfer 1400 euros per month to the hospital to be able to pay twelve employees, the cleaners, kitchen staff and drivers. For them, 100 euros is a monthly salary. Frans paid for them out of his own pocket, which we only found out after his death.”
will
Senff wanted to leave part of his inheritance to Flying Medical Services, the organization that provides medical assistance to the mission posts in Tanzania with small aircraft. But due to a mistake in the will, the money threatened to end up with the aid organization Cordaid. Henk Linstra: ,,In the end we succeeded in convincing Cordaid to spend the money on the Tweega Medica foundation from Amsterdam, which specializes in medical aid to Third World countries. Tweega made sure that a doctor, Sieuwke Hartmans from Aldeboarn in Friesland, now works as a tropical doctor in the Endulen hospital.”
Chagos Foundation
Frans Senff was born in May 1954 in Jakarta, Indonesia. He had Indian blood in his veins and in Assen, partly due to his background, he was a GP for Moluccan families in the Drenthe capital and Bovensmilde. In addition to his practice on Molenstraat in Asen, he rented a house in Bovensmilde in the Moluccan district, where he received his patients. After his fiftieth birthday, he started volunteering in Tanzania twice a year. He founded the Chagos foundation with acquaintances in Assen for his voluntary work. Named after an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, located exactly between Indonesia and Tanzania. After the death of Frans Senff, the foundation continues his life’s work in the Endulen hospital in Arusha. More info: foundationchagos.nl/endulen/
Operating knife
Hartmans recently raised money with a crowdfunding campaign to help patients with burns in the hospital. With a special surgical knife, she can now perform skin grafts on these people, which means they have to spend less time in hospital in Arusha.
Hartmans will visit Linstra in Assen this week. “She meets women here who knit hats for newborn Masai babies. Some children were born prematurely or malnourished. With a hat they retain the heat longer, because most heat escapes through the head, Frans taught us. He also regularly brought hats made by residents of the nursing homes in Beilen and Eelde. Frans then gave a lecture and, in addition to hats, money was also spontaneously collected for the hospital.”
Linstra’s wife Janneke, who worked in Senff’s general practice in Assen for fifteen years, has put together a new knitting club. The women hand over the caps to Sieuwke Hartmans on Thursday. ,, AIDS and TB are still a big problem in Tanzania and the poor Masai population is very susceptible to it. So also babies. They have less resistance, also because they are poorly fed,” says Janneke Linstra.
Ramen TB ward
In recent years, donations to the foundation have included the purchase of a four-wheel drive Toyota for patient transport and a new X-ray machine. The TB department also received windows, the stock of blood bags was maintained and new healthcare employees were trained and supervised. Senff continued to teach Maasai midwives in the open air in front of the hospital. Linstra says Senff’s legacy will not cover the costs of the remote hospital for years to come and additional donations are desperately needed. “As a foundation, it gives us a fantastic feeling that we can continue the work of Frans.”