August 2008 Newsletter
August 8, 2008 by Vicky
Two groups of volunteers each spent a fortnight in Mtunthama working at St Andrew’s Hospital and in AMAO – the orphanage, in addition to a group of students from St Peter’s School, Exeter who spent much of their time working with students from All Saints’ CDSS.
The Nutrition Rehabilitation Unit (NRU)
At this time of year the NRU is almost empty, as the recent harvest has provided sufficient food for the time being and the horrors of malnutrition are less evident. Increasingly we receive support for this work with the Under-5’s from a number of NGO’s such as Action Against Hunger, and this enables us to direct some additional funding to the orphanage. Consequently we have been able to purchase a supply of maize which should last certainly until April, and to leave sufficient funding to purchase “relish” (whatever is eaten with the nsima – a kind of mash made from maize) through to the end of April as well.
At current prices, it costs £12 a day for the 32 children in the orphanage for food, water and electricity. The AMAO weekly main meal menu is:
Monday: nsima, soya, vegetables
Tuesday :nsima, fish, vegetables
Wednesday: rice, meat, vegetables
Thursday: nsima, fish, vegetables
Friday: nsima, eggs, vegetables
Saturday : rice, beans, vegetables
Sunday: nsima, meat, vegetables
This looks quite reasonable until you realise that sometimes there has not been enough money to buy the necessary food, and that meat can mean ONE or at best TWO chickens between all 32 children! Fortunately the funding we have left should solve such problems for the immediate future. Inevitably the cost of maize will go up; today’s price is in the region of MK3000(£10.50) for 100kg, enough to provide the nsima only – no relish – for a family of five for one month. Set that against the income of the poorer families at MK4200/month (£14.70) and the perspective of poverty perhaps becomes clearer. It is so pleasing to know that with the help of all our supporters in UK Medic Malawi really is making a difference in these people’s lives.
Hospital News
The work of the Hospital continues to be immensely encouraging. The Dental Unit is fully functioning for the moment, though we have had problems in staffing it because a dental technician can virtually set his own salary, which is more than we are willing to pay because of the knock-on effect on the rest of the clinical staff in terms of both cost and morale. We are optimistic that we have now found someone who will be happy to work at St Andrew’s. The surgical ward should be completed by the end of October. We have a member of staff undergoing training in Blantyre to become an anaesthetist, and she has signed a legal bond tying her to the Hospital for at least five years after she qualifies. (Anaesthetists, too, are in short supply.) We were very fortunate to have a consultant anaesthetist with one of our groups of volunteers, and he was able with additional volunteer help, to do an invaluable assessment of medical stores and equipment, and to advise on the additional equipment we shall require when the operating theatre comes “on-line” next year.
Our new Administrator, Mr Aubrey Wande, has persuaded the Global AIDS Interfaith Alliance to donate an anaesthesia machine.
We shall shortly be publishing on the website a ‘shopping list’ of equipment we shall need for the Operating Theatre, in the hope that other organisations may also wish to offer similar help.
HIV/AIDS Centre
Work with HIV/AIDS patients is developing. We have two fully qualified HIV/AIDS counsellors, and anticipate the training of all clinical staff before Christmas. St Andrew’s will become over the next two months the HIV/AIDS centre for the whole area, with backing from the Ministry of Health and the consequent supply of free ARV drugs.
A group of young people living near the Hospital have set up a Youth Fellowship AIDS Club. They write and perform their own songs, poems and plays, and take them to the outlying villages as a means of educating about HIV, its causes, consequences and treatment.
The members of the HIV/AIDS Youth Club
This kind of self-help is at the very heart of the philosophy of Medic Malawi, that our role is to empower people to take responsibility for their own lives, and to work together to improve them.
Outreach Clinics
We have just purchased an additional second-hand vehicle to enhance the work of our outreach clinics for general medicine as well as HIV/AIDS work, thus enabling us to increase the number of outreach clinics and to provide a better follow-up for children discharged from the NRU. Outreach clinics are a great demand on staff time, as a clinical officer, a nurse/midwife, a homecare worker a dental worker and a driver are the minimum staffing needed for each clinic. How fortunate, then, that an anonymous donation in July of £10,000 enables us to proceed with the building of a pair of semi-detached houses for two more nurses. There is always a waiting list of nurses who wish to join the staff of St Andrew’s Hospital, and as quickly as we can build houses we can add to the medical staff.
We are blessed to have such a dedicated and enthusiastic staff at St Andrew’s, and to have so many volunteers willing to go out and use their talents in the service of needy people; and to have so many supporters here at home who donate money to enable all these wonderful developments to take place.
May God bless you all!
Dot and Mac Forsyth