Our Health sector needs urgent attention

When Dr. George Chaponda stood in Parliament and claimed on that there are no drugs in Health Centres in Mulanje district, many especially on Government benches laughed him off and loudly said "wazidziwa liti?" Simply when did you know that.
This week, I visited Kamuzu Central Hospital where Nurses have stopped working overtime, because what they are paid as overtime allowances is quite little.
Labour laws have a maximum limit of hours for anyone to be engaged in work. They prescribe the amount to be paid and when one should rest.
Unfortunately in Malawi's Health sector, Nurses and other health workers have no luxury of resting. On Nurse looks after as many as 100 patients. But in the case of my mother who for months worked alone at Chitimba Health Centre in Rumphi from maternity wing, OPD 1 and Pharmacy.
I would go to her home late at night and leave early in the morning, but she would be at the hospital deliverying babies or taking care of those that came in as an emergency. She moved to Chisimuka Health Centre, there she has to draw water from the river as there is no running water for mothers to deliver. She gives her personal torches to mothers and sick children to move every night. The family has asked her to retire and may be get into a small clinic in town where she can rest.
That is my personal experience, but looking at the slow reaction by Government on the STRIKE at Kamuzu Central Hospital, one wonders where we are now in terms of putting a Health priority.
5 people died at Kamuzu Central Hospital on Sunday and many more have lost lives during this period due to inadequate attention and in another Hospital the Queen Elizabeth Central they have reduced surgical services.
Now this administration has placed its priority on one of the most embarrassing episode in our independent history, the death of mothers during child delivery and the deaths of under 5 children. We are on the same position or sometimes worse off than war torn nations in Africa and other parts of the world.
It should be embarrassing to our Leaders preaching of economic growth, sovereignty and freedoms to learn that while they make speeches everyday at rallies or some phony events, at least three women will be loosing  their lives the same day.
Now all our political leaders have pretended to place much value on human life. We have seen deaths probed with vigour, statements made as if Jesus Christ was returning today. But the truth if one be told today, they do it for political mileage.
If they care deeply about every human life, the cases at Kamuzu Central Hospital and Queen Elizabeth Hospital should have been a priority and we should have done everything to ensure that nobody died.
We do not need a Commission of Inquiry to find out what killed the poor women and Children, we need to act that nobody should die again at a Hospital due to lack of personnel.
Only then will my faith in our political leaders return....




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