Rapha Mozambique — Building lasting healthcare in northern Mozambique

5 billionpeople worldwide lack safe, affordable surgical care (Lancet Commission)

367operations per 100,000 in Mozambique, against a minimum standard of 5,000

1 : 189,000people for every specialist surgical provider in Mozambique (target: 1 per 5,000)

12Mpeople in the three northern provinces Rapha is built to serve

The Need

Mozambicans have never stopped building here.

Northern Mozambique carries one of the world's heaviest health burdens. Its health workers have carried the district hospitals through war, displacement, and decades of aid programs that arrive, do good work, and finish. What the north still lacks is one particular thing: a mission surgical training institution of its own. Permanent, Mozambican-governed, and built to train the next generation.

That is what Rapha is building.

Understand the need →

Clinical care in Mozambique — Dr. Brian Meyers with patients.

The Model

Three phases. One institution.

A deliberate, staged build, designed to outlast its founders.

MAY 2027

PILOT CLINIC

Outpatient care opens in Nampula City: immediate access, and the clinical foundation everything else is built on.

2030–31

SURGERY BEGINS

Procedures and surgical capability build, with Mozambican physicians returning from training.

2035+

TRAINING HOSPITAL

A surgical training hospital and regional referral center, with a residency intended through PAACS.

See the full plan →

Where Things Stand

The founding phase has already begun.

Community health outreach in northern Mozambique

Legally recognized

An autonomous Mozambican association, recognized by the Ministry of Justice in December 2025, with ten founding directors — and a U.S.-based 501(c)(3) mobilizing team behind it, Friends of Rapha Mozambique (FORMoza).

Meet the people

Aligned with the health system

A memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of Health is in process, alongside direct engagement with the provincial and district health authorities Rapha will work under.

How Rapha is governed

The proposed pilot clinic building, Nampula City

Ready to build

Four Mozambican physicians in dedicated training, pilot premises identified in Nampula City, and a preferred permanent site near Rapale under due diligence.

See the plan

The People

Four Mozambican doctors, committed to return.

Rapha's founding clinical staff are in training now — three on clinical externship at AIC Kijabe Hospital in Kenya, one in surgical residency with PAACS in Malawi.

Dr. Carlos SelOn track in training at Kijabe, Kenya · 2027

Dr. DeClerk CarlosOn track in training at Kijabe, Kenya · 2027

Dr. Cássia OmiaOn track in training at Kijabe, Kenya · 2027

Dr. Lina BalanePAACS surgical residency, Malawi · on track for 2030

Meet the team →

Why It Works

This model has worked before.

Kibuye Hope · Burundi

80 → 346 beds

And 609 → 3,627 annual surgeries, in one decade. Peer-reviewed.

Malamulo · Malawi

850 → 3,000+

Annual surgeries, more than tripled after long-term faculty arrived and a residency began.

PAACS Network

100% in Africa

Of responding graduates in a 2018 twenty-year follow-up study; 79% serve in their home country.

AIC Kijabe Hospital, Kenya — est. 1915: a mission clinic that became a 363-bed teaching hospital doing some 9,000 surgeries a year under majority-Kenyan leadership. It is Rapha's model, and the place where three of Rapha's four physicians are training today.

See the evidence →