Madagascar Care Leader Sister Marie-Annick Labrousse Dies After 56 Years Running Tanjombat

Sister Marie-Annick Labrousse ran the Saint-Vincent-de-Paul care center in Tanjombato for 56 consecutive years. She died recently, and her funeral took place Saturday at Tanjombato cemetery in Antananarivo, the city where she had spent the bulk of her adult life delivering services to Madagascar’s most vulnerable populations.

Born April 17, 1946, in a small commune near Le Dorat in the Haute-Vienne department, Labrousse trained as a nurse at the Limoges hospital center before departing for Madagascar in 1970. That clinical grounding proved essential. Upon arrival in Antananarivo, she assumed leadership of the Saint-Vincent-de-Paul center in Tanjombato, a suburban facility she would continue to operate for more than five decades.

The operational scope was substantial. Over those 56 years, Labrousse managed the center’s response to Madagascar’s recurring humanitarian crises: cyclones, famine periods, sanitary emergencies, and security threats. The facility delivered meals, medical care, and schooling to thousands of children, and offered vocational training in carpentry and sewing to young people seeking a path forward. That breadth of service earned her the informal title “Maman plus,” or “Mother-plus,” a recognition of her role as a maternal figure to generations of beneficiaries across multiple age groups.

Sustaining that level of delivery required more than on-the-ground commitment. Labrousse maintained ties to her native Charente region through her sister, Nicole Rannou, who lived in Confolens, and used infrequent visits to France to cultivate local support for her Madagascar operations. In 2004, her advocacy led to the founding of Manao-An, a Confolens-based association dedicated to raising funds for the Saint-Vincent-de-Paul center. The organization continues to operate. It has scheduled a fundraising meal for Sunday, September 13, at noon at the abbey hall in Lesterps, with tickets priced at 25 euros including beverages.

During a visit to Charente in August 2025, Labrousse spoke without hesitation about the ongoing need for her presence in Madagascar, describing the island as her “second homeland.” She expressed clear determination to return, maintaining the resolve that had defined her decades of service despite the physical and logistical demands of running a care facility in a resource-constrained environment.

The center had already absorbed one significant loss when Father Albano, a priest associated with the facility, died of COVID-19 in 2020 and was buried at the same Tanjombato cemetery. Labrousse’s death marks another departure from the institution she built through personal commitment and sustained resourcefulness across more than half a century.

The question now is who carries the operation forward, and whether the infrastructure and funding networks she assembled, including Manao-An’s continued work in Charente, can sustain the center she refused to leave.