Rainforest Hospital
Tava-i / Paraguay

Our project "Cerro Mbatovy" — "Rising Earth" — set out to improve medical and hygiene care in Paraguay, in Tava-i in the Caazapa department, in the rainforest near the Brazilian border.

Founded in 1978, the hospital was, until a few years ago, the only one within a radius of around 100 km. Until its conversion to an outpatient clinic it had 52 beds. On average 1,500 patients a year received inpatient treatment, and a further 8,000 were and are seen as outpatients. Over the years, ever more complex operations were performed at the hospital, so that only in the most exceptional cases was it necessary to fly seriously ill patients to the capital, Asunción, some 300 km away.

Rainforest hospital, Tava-i

Project leader
Dr. med. Dr. med. vet.
Hans Wischerath
(† 2023)

Alongside the medical work, the hospital had a small farm attached to it. Its purpose was both to supply the hospital with a varied, wholesome diet of meat and produce and to serve as a model for the farmers of the surrounding area. Small residential settlements grew up around the hospital, with the Rexroth Foundation helping people to build their own houses. The Paraguayan state has also, as the Rexroth Foundation had hoped, steadily continued to develop medical provision. Today there is a medical post roughly every 18 km in the area. The Georg Ludwig Rexroth Foundation has thus reached the goal it set itself. It has therefore concluded an agreement with the Paraguayan "Fundación Ambulatorio Tava-í de Paraguay", under which the project was handed over to this organisation in 2003 to be continued as an outpatient clinic and emergency facility.

The Rexroth Foundation undertook to provide the necessary funds for several further years, so that emergency care and outpatient treatment for the people of this rural region of Paraguay would be assured. The project was concluded in 2008.

Total funding amounted to EUR 5.0 million.