Since April 2006, Sr. Dr. Marian has been the Medical Officer at the Faraja Community Based Healthcare Centre in Singida, Tanzania, a remote municipality of over 200,000 people. Initially, the Centre provided services for those affected by HIV/AIDS, including voluntary councselling and testing, awareness-raising about HIV, malaria and malnutrition. Over the years, the programme has expanded to include people, especially cancer patients needing hospice and palliative care, persons with disabilities survivors of gender-based violence and those affected by human trafficking.T
In 2021, Sr. Dr. Marian Scena was presented with a ‘Distinguished Graduate Award’ from her Alma Mater, University College Dublin, where she received her degree in medicine in 1975. he video below tells a brief story of her calling into life as a missionary with the Medical Missionaries of Mary, and her eventual journey to becoming the Co-Director and programme doctor of the Faraja Community Based Healthcare Centre in Singida, Tanzania. She and her team there provide palliative care, end-of-life care and home hospice care for the poor in Singida Municipality, a remote district of nearly two hundred thousand people.
“It is such a privilege, and often very humbling, to do Hospice and Palliative Care. There are so many precious moments when I am touched by our patients, when they have been stripped of everything as they journey to meet their God. It is such a privilege to be part of their journey!”
Sr. Marian Scena, MMM
Learn more about the Faraja Community Based Healthcare Centre, and Sr. Marian’s work there in The Faraja Centre: Community Based Healthcare for a remote community, a case study from Misean Cara’s 2022 Annual Report.
Sr. Marian also writes about her first-hand experiences serving patients through the Faraja Centre’s outreach services to seriously ill patients.
To learn more about the Medical Missionaries of Mary and how you can support their work, please click here.
