Malawi Nurse’s Desperate Message to Mirror Readers.. ‘Without Help My People Are Dying’
By MAGGIE BARRY
BABIES crammed three to a cot, dozens of expectant mums in a tiny room – and medical staff at breaking point.
It is a scene unimaginable in a UK hospital but for Dorothy Ngoma, head of Malawi’s nurses and midwives, this is the daily reality.
The maternal mortality figures show the chasm between care levels here and in the African nation. In Scotland four women die for every 100,000 live births – in Malawi it is a gruesome 1,800.
Dorothy, visiting Glasgow’s Princess Royal Maternity Hospital to highlight the critical shortage of health workers in Malawi, said: “It is quite simple – without help my people are dying, not in ones or twos but in tens and twenties every day.”
There is one nurse for every 3,500 people in the African nation, and one doctor for every 60,000.
A staggering 6,000 nursing posts remain unfilled as the country simply can not afford to pay trained staff to stay.
Dorothy said: “The problem is they are good so they go abroad where the money is better, the conditions are better and the mortality rate is lower.
“It is exhausting for many of my nurses – physically and mentally exhausting. They are on call 24/7, particularly in the rural districts where they may be the only medical carer for 15,000 people.
“There is only so much death one person can take.”
Dorothy’s whistlestop tour to Glasgow was to lobby for more money to pay nurses in Malawi and raise awareness of the people’s plight.
She said: “It should be possible to protect these people – to reduce or stop all unnecessary deaths.
“We need to take measures to help the poorest of the poor because they can’t help themselves so someone has to.
“We have lost so many nurses and so the burden of care falls on those who are left – but that burden is too great.
“The rich countries need to do more to support the poor and to change what is happening. They need to share their resources to protect the poor who are dying.”
She urged Scots to support Oxfam’s Health and Education for All campaign which aims to put six million more health and education workers into the world’s poorest countries.
Speaking in Glasgow, Dorothy said: “The hospital I visited here was clean and spacious and the resources for one patient would do a whole hospital in Malawi.
She added: “When I hear people complaining I think ‘They should come out to Malawi’.”
www.oxfam.org.uk/forall
FOCUS ON MALAWI
Scotland’s links to Malawi go back to missionary David Livingstone who arrived there 1859 Some 13million people live in the southeastern African country Officials figures claim 14 per cent are HIV positive but some reports put it at 30 per cent Lake Malawi is the 10th largest in the world Tobacco, tea and sugar are the main economic exports.
m.barry@mirror.co.uk
(c) 2008 Daily Mirror. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.