Dr.Marko Hingi

Marko Hingi Story

I am Dr. Marko Hingi from Tanzania; currently I am working as Founding Executive Director at
Tanzania Rural Health Movement located in North-West of Tanzania.

My passion towards serving my family and community started during my childhood when I was
living with my mother and young brother. One day my mother became ill and there was nobody
to escort her to the hospital. I handed her a walking stick and together my young brother on her
back she walked to the hospital. In the evening she was came back without the stick and she said
dogs were chasing her and she had used the stick to defend herself. Although I was still young, I
quickly realized the poor access to care which exists in our community and thought this was
unfair. Reminding myself of this small story of my mother I started to develop my own ideas on
how to make a difference in my society.

I was fortunate enough to be able to start medical school and during this time I started looking
for opportunities and resources to fulfill my dream of saving my family and community. It was
challenging to receive support from my lectures and fellow students as they questioned our
ability to make time for community activities while pursuing medical school.

After struggling for a year looking for support without any success I realized I could start
working with what was available to me. Access to Social Media and close friends eventually
helped me to gain support outside of the University gaining support from others supporting my
ideas. I became friends with students from Ghana, Nigeria and USA through medical student’s
association networks, which supported me in the development of projects through proofreading
and editing while introducing me to influential people and sharing opportunities.

Participation in various medical students’ conferences and competitions eventually build the
confidence in me to launch the ‘Tanzania Rural Health Movement’ which aims to use various
forms of media to provide health services to rural communities. Volunteering for various
organizations has helped me to gain leadership and management skills, which played a great role
in development of the organization. Together with fellow students we identified urgent health
problems amongst street children, such as various forms of wounds and the lack of access to
proper pre-hospital care. Access to free online resources enabled us to develop projects to
address those challenges in our community. We supported 625 children with basic access to
medical treatment through weekly medical clinics, lead by medical students. Recently we have
been able to set up a functioning ambulance service through Messaging System and trained
several first-responders.

Working with Tanzania Rural Health Movement to find solutions for various public health
challenges enabled me to be among the Queen’s Young Leaders 2016, The Associate Fellow at

The Royal Commonwealth Society and resulted in being featured on CNN’s ‘Vital Signs’ with
Dr.Sanjay Gupta. I am proud of the success of our organization and achievements of our
projects as the number of beneficiaries in Mwanza community is increasing every day.