Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There are times when all of us in this chamber are very proud to be Australian. The reason for that is there are Australians doing great work around the world. I want to talk about one of those groups who are doing great things. The Swahili word 'rafiki' means 'friend'. On 9 June my wife, Cheryle, and I attended the 2018 Rafiki Ball at Crown Perth in my electorate of Swan. It was a fantastic evening with over 550 people attending. Now in its 15th year, the Rafiki Ball is the main fundraising event for the Rafiki Surgical Missions. This is an organisation that has changed the lives of thousands of Tanzanian children and adults with conditions such as cleft lip, cleft palate and burns injuries. Each year, the ball assists in fundraising the majority of the mission's operating costs to send medical teams across to Tanzania to provide free medical treatment and train local staff. It also assists in funding the transport of donated medical equipment to under-resourced clinics and hospitals.

Rafiki is a volunteer organisation, and every dollar raised at the ball goes directly to its work in Tanzania. Australian-born children with disfiguring facial deformities have them repaired while they are still babies, but this does not happen for babies in Tanzania. In Tanzania's remote rural areas, sufferers can be forced to endure a lifetime of marginalisation. Rafiki's volunteer surgical teams are giving these people the chance to live normal lives. Treated babies will grow up never knowing the alienation that they may have been subjected to. Children go back to school with new confidence and completely accepted by their peers, and adults go on to find work, marry and even take on important leadership roles in their villages.

The Rafiki teams have undertaken 29 surgical missions in Mwanza and Dar es Salaam. Volunteer surgeons, anaesthetists and nurses perform up to 80 operations during each two-week mission, and physiotherapists work with patients postoperatively. Local doctors and nurses also benefit from our collaboration with host hospitals, working alongside our medical team, building their own skills in this specialised area of reconstructive surgery. In addition to the services and training, Rafiki also sends medical treatments to Tanzania that would otherwise go to waste in Australia. Since 2010 Rafiki has packed and shipped more than 43 containers for distribution to hospitals and medical centres in Tanzania. The replacement cost of this equipment exceeds $10 million.

Last year the Australia Tanzania Society, with the help of Rafiki, sent two containers to Tanzania and distributed medical equipment, school equipment and laptop computers across the country. ATS also facilitated some volunteers to teach in primary school and donated a school bus to the community. These are Australians that we can be extremely proud of.