Newsletter: July 2009
July 6, 2009 by Vicky
St Andrew’s Hospital now has a staff of seventy one and growing, and so the building of staff houses is a major part of development. We have a new surgical ward and an ART centre(to care for HIV/AIDS patients). Whilst it is encouraging to note that the incidence of HIV infection in the total population is falling – 14.6% in 2007, 12.6% in 2009 – of chronic condition admissions 45% are HIV+. It is also encouraging to see the reduction in mother-child transmission of HIV as a result of education, and the improving incidence of ante-natal testing.
The Ministry of Health is funding the training of our clinicians in ARV management, and St Andrew’s will be the principal HIV/AIDS centre in Kasungu East district. Generally the hospital is seeing an ever-increasing number of patients. St Andrew’s is also set to become the Kasungu East centre for all but the most complex surgical procedures, working closely with Kasungu General Hospital. Future plans include enhanced water supplies, enhanced electrical supplies through the use of additional generators, ideally solar power/water heating, additional wards and an administration block as funding becomes available.
Gemma Barrow, a medical student, spent 6 weeks at St Andrew’s. She writes:
I did learn such a lot. I learned how to prescribe drugs that aren’t routinely used; how to practise real clinical medicine where a diagnosis isn’t solely made on the basis of test results as the tests aren’t available. When I arrived the Hospital did not have the reagents to test blood levels; about half way through my stay we received the equipment which made a big difference. I’ve left part of my heart in the village and I can’t wait to return sometime in the future.
School Visits
During our summer break there will be 4 school groups going to Mtunthama. Sedbergh School from Cumbria have sponsored the building of a much-needed Guardian Shelter, and during their visit will decorate the whole of the interior.
This is the kitchen area of the new Guardian Shelter, also to be decorated by the Sedbergh students. The tree stump will grow again, providing shade on hot days.
Monkseaton School from Tyne and Wear will be busy decorating the Primary School; St Peter’s School, Exeter will work with All Saints’ Secondary School and build a classroom for the nearby government primary school; and Wrekin College will again spend most of their time decorating AMAO (the orphanage). They have also funded the purchase of a vehicle to be used as an ambulance, and 2 of their staff will drive it from Johannesburg to Mtunthama – quite an adventure in itself! In addition to the work they will carry out, there is no doubt that all the UK students will enjoy time spent getting to know a different culture and sharing activities with their peers in the schools and orphanage.
A parachute sent to AMAO by Noah’s Ark, a children’s group at St Andrew’s Church, Plymouth, proved to be a massive hit. The visiting students from UK will certainly be dragged in to play!
AMAO, the orphanage
AMAO, the orphanage, has forty two resident children, 9 children cared for by adoptive families and 2 who somehow manage to divide their time very happily between adoptive families and AMAO! Florence and Boyson who have run AMAO since it began, without pay and without even a room to themselves, now have a small room of their own. When we said we would get 2 beds for them their immediate response was that 3 were needed, because all the babies would be sleeping in the room with them!
There is a great deal of help provided by the local community, quite apart from those who have adopted children. All Saints’ Church gave all its maize, originally earmarked for the Diocese, to the orphange, any electrical or plumbing work is done without charge by local tradesmen, volunteers drop in to help on a regular basis, and people turn up unannounced with small gifts of maize or vegetables to help feed the children. The older children do all their own washing, and are responsible for other tasks such as looking after little ones, cooking, chopping firewood for the kitchen and so on. The Mothers’ Union has cleaned the whole of the interior, including washing down all the walls. AMAO is a wonderfully happy place.
Because there are 9 babies, large amounts of formula milk are required, the cost of which is a major drain on resources. We would love to be able to offer the children a better diet with more protein, but that depends, as everything, on funding.
This little girl came to AMAO after her mother died in childbirth. As the mother’s name was Joyce, it was decided to call the baby Rejoice. She is now 2 years old, and seldom to be seen without a drink of milk.
Isaac, Grace and Henry from AMAO
Primary School
The Primary School now has 137 pupils, of whom 60 are sponsored by people in UK, All Saints’ Secondary School has 285 students of whom 45 are sponsored. The secondary school is completing the building of a science laboratory which will be a great asset. St Faith’s Kindergarten continues to provide care, food and basic teaching to some sixty children.
It is perhaps salutary to see a classroom – and remember that not all primary schools in Malawi have classrooms even as good as this. The bricks on the dirt floor are seats for the children. The cost of sponsoring a child at secondary school is £40 a year, and at primary £50 a year. There are always more children in need of sponsorship than there are sponsors.
Thank you all for your continuing support.
With your help, Medic Malawi really is
MAKING A DIFFERENCE
God bless you all.
Dot and Mac Forsyth
Malawi Video
October 2, 2008 by Vicky
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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
Group Visits
May 13, 2008 by Vicky
Towards the end of 2007 St. Peter’s School, Exeter, through a generous donation from a parent of a student at the school, sponsored a visit to UK of one teacher and four students from All saints’ Secondary School. They were hosted by families in Exeter and Plymouth.
In 2008 St. Peter’s School will again visit to continue their work with All Saints’ School and to be involved in a range of activities in the local community.
Two groups of supporters, mainly from St Andrew’s Church, Plymouth, will be visiting in June/July to carry out a number of tasks including working at the Hospital, with both primary and secondary schools, at the NRU and with the orphans.
In 2009 Wrekin College again plan to visit, and Sedbergh School in Cumbria are planning a trip.
Such visits are of enormous value to the Mtunthama community, and without doubt those who participate return with a much greater understanding of third world problems and their possible solutions
Opening the Dental Surgery
January 15, 2008 by Vicky
The Prideaux family went to Malawi in June 2006. They joined the staff of St Andrews Clinic for two weeks. Malcolm and Bridget are both dentists, Sam, a pharmacy student, worked in the dispensary, David worked with Andy, the lab technician and Jonny made new friends at the school.
They saw patients like this lady with serious problems
Our instruments were sterilized in what looked like a large pressure-cooker so that we could do our best for young patients like Arthur as well as older patients who had toothache.
The staff were very keen to teach local people how to look after their teeth better. but we found that over half the people we saw had dental decay. So we promised the people of Mtunthama that we would try to get them their own dental surgery.
Our application to the charity, ‘Dentaid’ was successful, and they agreed to send a surgery to St Andrews clinic. The equipment travelled from Dentaid’s Headquarters in Salisbury over 5,000 miles to Mtunthama carefully packed and crated for the journey.
Crate from Dentaid
In November 2007 Malcolm returned to Mtunthama with a suitcase full of supplies to check that all was well with the crate and that the dental surgery would soon be ready for treating patients.
Malcolm Prideaux doing a checkup
Don the dental therapist looking very pleased with the new chair
With special thanks to Dentaid for their help in finding equipment for our surgery, and preparing it for the journey. Medic Malawi will continue to support the work in the new dental surgery.
Malcolm would like to thank you all for your prayers and support during his visit.
December 2007