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

NRU supplies

The Orphan House has doubled in size, and will be able to cater for about 50 orphan children; the laboratory now has a blood bank; there is a dedicated Voluntary Counselling and Testing room for HIV/AIDS patients; Dentaid will be sending out a refurbished Dental Surgery in the third week of September, and we already have staff who will be able to carry out dental procedures.

Florence and Boyson Kwaderanji, who look after the orphans

Group Visits

During July, three groups of young people from UK visited the campus to work on various projects.

Wrekin College from Shropshire paid a second visit in order to complete the second wing of the Orphan House. Quite apart from general support for Medic Malawi, they have made the orphans their special concern. This year they funded the construction of the second phase of the Orphan House, and built a kitchen to cater for 50-plus people. Additionally they started work on an irrigated garden to provide “relish” throughout the year, and made a play area for the children.

At the end of each day Florence and Boyson check all the children, a necessary precaution because they often find more children than they expect: other village children try to stay in the Orphan House rather than in their own homes!

St. Peter’s School, Exeter also paid a second visit. Whilst working with the NRU is one element of their activities – they livened up the NRU with some fun logos on the walls – they are most closely involved with the Secondary School. They have set up an internet link with the school, and have funded project work for the students of both schools to share their research. For example, they arranged for the All Saints’ students to spend time at the lakeshore studying geography topics, whilst the St. Peter’s students worked on similar research in Devon both groups were then able to share the information they had learned. St. Peter’s hope to arrange an exchange for teachers and students in the near future.

A group of young people from Islay spent some time in Mtunthama as part of an adventure activity under the auspices of Outlook Expeditions. They began the work of building a science lab for the Secondary School. There were two other groups from Outlook Expeditions at other locations in Malawi we hope that the All Saints’/St.Andrew’s campus will become a regular feature of their activities.

Foundations for the Science Laboratory

St Andrew’s Hospital

It is remarkable that only six years ago St. Andrew’s was a small rural clinic with only a dozen staff: it is now a Community Hospital with a staff of 58! Many of them have been with the project from the beginning, and one of the really encouraging things is the fact that so many have progressed by dint of training courses to upgrade their qualifications.

The schools have grown enormously in both numbers and buildings/facilities, the kindergarden goes from strength to strength whilst provision for orphans is improving all the time. It is good to see more and more volunteers choosing to spend time at one or other of the projects, and we aim to build a house over the next year or so to provide accommodation for them.

We noted that not only are health professionals from Kasungu General Hospital choosing St. Andrew’s, but also the maternity unit is becoming popular with the midwives from Lilongwe General Hospital to have their own babies! The MP for Kasungu East chooses St. Andrew’s for his family’s health care.

NRU

The NRU continues to be central to the work of Medic Malawi. Several NGO’s support the work, but their criteria are more rigorous than we would wish, in that children have to be seriously malnourished before they become eligible for help. As almost half of all children in Malawi are chronically malnourished, at St. Andrew’s we seek to provide food and health care to children before they reach the point of malnutrition which would attract help from the NGO’s. This means that we need to fund both feeding programmes and health care supplements. We are also hoping to increase the follow-up procedures once children are discharged, in order to ensure their ongoing treatment and support.

Carers with their children in the NRU. The smart, warm clothes the children are wearing were sent by well-wishers in UK. There is always a need for warm clothing for children.

Helping people to help themselves

It has always been the philosophy of Medic Malawi that the projects belong to the people of Mtunthama, that ultimately they must be responsible for managing and developing the work initiated by supporters here in UK. It is therefore especially encouraging to find an HIV/AIDS project in nearby Wimbe run entirely by volunteers, headed by Peter Minjale, one of our Clinical Officers. There is a team of 7 trained counsellors, each of whom has accepted responsibility for three villages, which he/she has undertaken to visit at least three times a week. Some of those villages involve a journey of 15kms each way. As there is no transport, they go on foot! We hope that we shall be able to send out some bicycles with the container due to go at the beginning of September.

The volunteers, and the building from which they work.

Another impressive project being run by local people is an agricultural cooperative. Having been provided with initial funding for seeds and fertiliser, they are now producing excellent crops for sale. The profits are used to purchase more seed and fertiliser, and to further develop the scheme. Those currently involved have their own bank account for the cooperative, and there is a waiting list of people wishing to join. The scheme does depend on a reliable water supply, and at present there are four locations adjacent to dambo areas (marshy land) in use, but the intention is to find and develop more such areas.

At the end of this month we are sending a container of goods and equipment to Mtunthama. This will include medical equipment, computers for both Hospital and Secondary School, books for both Primary and Secondary Schools, and of course the Land Rover/ambulance.

Our visit this year has been immensely encouraging. Not only are all the projects with which Medic Malawi is involved running successfully, but we gained a sense that the whole country is much more positive than previously. The harvest this year ranged from good to “bumper” and we can be optimistic that any food shortages will be relatively minor.

One final thing: the increasing number of young people visiting Mtuthama, either with groups or as individuals, is serving to build bridges and foster understanding across the divides of distance and cultures.

Ambuye akhale nanu!
May the Lord be with you!
Dot and Mac Forsyth

At the clinic were treated like royalty, with our host families sharing what they had with us, making sure we had hot water for baths, and European-style food.

We divided our time into three areas.

Firstly we assessed the current dental facilities, and looked at the needs of the local population. The facilities consisted of a broken wheelchair a few needles and anaesthetic cartridges, and some very elderly forceps. We marvelled at the skill of Cuthbert, the clinical officer responsible for extractions. During our time there we examined 160 patients, of whom 60% had tooth decay, about half of these complaining of pain.

Our second task was to extract teeth, and carry out some simple fillings for those where the decay was not too far advanced.

Our third task was to set up a preventive programme, consisting of simple tooth brushing instruction and diet advice. We visited the students in the local primary and secondary schools, and families in one of the nearby villages. We had taken supplies of brushes for Cuthbert and James to give to patients who may attend in future for dental advice. By the time we left James, Cuthbert and Millica, the nutritional educator, were ready to work as a team on outreach programmes, in the other nearby villages.

Sam was able to put to use his pharmacy skills in the clinic. One achievement was the cataloguing of medicines, reorganising them, allowing the clinicians to dispose of expired drugs, which had been taking up valuable storage space.

David worked in the laboratory, carrying out blood tests for patients with diseases such as malaria and AIDS. He also taught group of the local lads the finer skills of basketball, and was given permission to use the basketball courts of nearby Kamuzu Academy.

Jonny, made lots of friends at the local primary school, learning about Malaria and agriculture in his science lessons, alongside Maths and English. Education was different to that in the UK, but he really enjoyed it.

As we left we did make a promise to raise funds to provide a much-needed dental surgery to serve the forty thousand local population. In the words of Arnie…the Terminator….”I’ll be back”….