• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Where the Struggle to Save Life Never Ceases ; APPEAL: African Hospital Boss Paints Grim Picture of Poor Facilities,Overworked Staff - and Poverty

Posted on: Saturday, 25 March 2006, 12:00 CST

By Alan Harris

THE Evening Telegraph is supporting an appeal to help provide equipment and training to two hospitals in poverty-stricken Malawi, in southern Africa. Today the man who runs one of the hospitals describes the poor facilities and adversities his staff faceon a daily basis.

THE man running a Malawian hospital today spelled out the desperate need for new equipment to help save lives.

Emmanuel Pemba painted a stark portrait of the daily problems facing medical staff and he hopes it will generate a huge response to a big fundraising appeal.

The Link Malawi campaign aims to make vast improvements to facilities at St Anne's Hospital and the District Hospital in the poverty-stricken district of Nkhotakota.

The hospitals are under-staffed and badly lack essential equipment to treat patients, many of whom have HIV.

The Link Malawi appeal is being run by University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust, and is backed by the Evening Telegraph.

It aims to raise pounds 250,000 over five years and Coventry's Walsgrave Hospital will be donating a vast amount of equipment no longer needed when it completes its move to the new University Hospital in the summer.

Mr Pemba, hospital administrator at St Anne's, said his staff were stuck in a vicious circle of poverty which had life- threatening consequences for patients.

He said: "Our doctors and staff are usually overworked due to a shortage of clinical and nursing staff.

"They work with very limited equipment and supplies. There is a shortage of drugs too.

"The doctors and staff earn very low salaries, it is difficult to retain staff and there are no funds for staff development and training."

St Anne's Hospital, which has 200 beds, has just one medical doctor and is in urgent need of basic and essential equipment, such as thermometers, stethoscopes and blood pressure machines.

Its sparse facilities include just one main operating theatre table, one anaesthetic machine and a 34-year-old sterilisation machine which often breaks down.

Staff have no X-ray machine and rely on X-ray services from another hospital.

St Anne's has poor quality beds and mattresses - often just foam - and staff have to make floor beds during outbreaks of malaria or diarrhoea.

Its "ambulance service" consists of open pick-up trucks which are used to bring patients in from outlying rural areas, including women in labour.

Mr Pemba said: "We have one steriliser and whenever it breaks down we have to do sterilisation either at a clinic 57km away or a district hospital 110km away - on a daily basis.

"We continue to use open pick-ups as ambulances to transport our patients even on rainy days. Imagine an ante-natal mother referred from a traditional birth attendant from a remote corner of the district to St Anne's Hospital for further management on arainy day."

Malawi has a high HIV population and hospital staff have to treat many people with the disease and related conditions such as tuberculosis, diarrhoea and pneumonia.

St Anne's Hospital deals with about 1,400 labour admissions a year but a quarter of pregnant women in urban districts are infected with HIV and the country has the highest maternal death rates in pregnancy in the world.

The country's health service has also lost many skilled doctors who have contracted HIV, leaving the profession in a downward spiral.

But despite working in such difficult circumstances, staff remain professional and are determined to treat patients to the best of their ability.

Mr Pemba said: "People like their work despite the difficulties that they go through and are committed to serving the patients from our local community."

Mr Pemba is urging Evening Telegraph readers to support the Link Malawi appeal which he says will have a huge impact on the hospital's ability to treat patients.

He said: "It will improve the quality, efficiency and reliability of our services.

"We shall have a better capacity to save people's lives much more than we are able to do

Source: Coventry Evening Telegraph

More News in this Category