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Ray of hope for Zomba
By
Raphael Mweninguwe - 17-06-2002 |
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Spiders, flies, dust and falling ceiling are some of the things anyone would likely see at the 110 years old plus Zomba Central Hospital.
Another sorry sight would be patients sleeping on the floor because beds are not enough.
Both government officials and Zomba residents are not happy with this condition.
It has forced some doctors and nurses to search for greener pastures elsewhere.
It is against this backdrop that the Malawi Government, with funding from the Germany recently began constructing a 300-bed hospital.
President Bakili Muluzi visited the hospital in January last year and was appalled by the environment patients were in.
He promised the people of Zomba a new hospital and a committee was appointed to steer the project.
The construction of the new hospital is expected to take 80 weeks.
Dumbo Lemani, Minister for Presidential Affairs and member of the committee, said the construction of a new hospital in Zomba was long over due.
Lemani said apart from easing congestion, the new hospital would provide employment to people in Zomba .
The project, according to the Health Minister Yusuf Mwawa, would cost about K500 million.
Speaking when he launched the project, Mwawa said the hospital was being constructed following Muluzi’s promise last year.
He said the hospital would reduce congestion and improve the patients’ living conditions.
Mwawa observed that patients were sleeping on the floor and it was time it was brought to an end.
The original building for Zomba Central Hospital was constructed in 1896 by the colonial government and had 100 beds.
The hospital went through an extension period from 1931 to 1934.
Since then there have been other extensions to increase capacity.
Mwawa also said apart from the Germany, the project is also being funded by the British Government through the Department for International Development (DFID) and Norway through its Norwegian Development Agency (Norad).
Germany Deputy Ambassador Peter Mende said the project delayed because there was a lot of planning involved and hoped that construction would not take a long time.
He said because of the good relationship between the Malawi and Germany, his government would continue helping the country with financial and technical assistance through the Malawi-German Technical Cooperation.
Zomba has a population of about 550,000 and about 800 patients visit the hospital daily, according to statistics.
Liwonde Hospital was also constructed with funding from Germany.
The Germans are also funding the construction of Chitipa District Hospital, according to Mwawa.
The German Government is also helping in the fight against HIV/Aids through German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) projects in Zomba and Machinga.
This project is under the Aids Prevention and Support Unit (Apasu) covering the Southern Region.
Head of Apasu Barbara Schmidt-Eule said there was a number of programmes to fight HIV/Aids.
“We will conduct different training programmes on peer education, home based care and visit the work places,” she said.
She also said chiefs and Banja La Mtsogolo (BLM), a healthcare NGO, would be involved in disseminating Aids and family planning messages to people.
Among many other activities, the information centre is distributing Aids information kits, condoms and disseminating family planning messages to employees of various companies and institutions.
One such activity took place recently when GTZ invited BLM to lecture employees of Admarc and Securicor in Liwonde on Aids and family planning.
The employees were shown a film and were entertained by Takumana Travelling Theatre, which is sponsored by BLM.
The project’s technical advisor Susanne Pritze-Aliassime said the decision to take Aids messages to employees made it easier for them to get information instead of calling them to a meeting away from their work.
She said the only way to control Aids is through behavioural change and that bringing messages to employees would be effective because many people would be reached.
“This is why we encourage people to be faithful or to use condoms”, she said.
She, however, said behavioural change was proving difficult to many people.
Aids-related deaths continue to increase among men and women in the reproductive age group of 15-50 years.
Malawi is rated as one of the countries in the Sub-Saharan Africa with the highest rate of HIV infection. The National Aids Commission (NAC) estimates that about 85,000 new infections occur annually.
Management of Admarc in Liwonde said they were happy with the move and asked Liwonde Health Information Centre to lecture the employees again.
Apart from visiting employees, Liwonde Health Information Centre is also distributing condoms to sex workers in Liwonde, where prostitution is said to be on the increase.
Liwonde Health Information Centre coordinator Levi Soko said the centre also discusses with owners of bottle stores on how they can effectively fight the epidemic.
He said that the problem of Aids could not end if the sex workers were left out in the fight.
One of the ladies, who works at one of the bottle stores in Liwonde and refused to be identified, confirmed that sex workers were being given condoms as a way of preventing the spread of the disease..
NAC estimates that Aids is killing about 70,000 people in Malawi every year.
It is also estimated that the figure may rise if there is no behavioural change.
The German Embassy in Lilongwe said last August, during the visit of German Minister for Economic Cooperation Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul to Malawi, that about K50 billion has been given to the country as development assistance.
The embassy also said Malawi is a major beneficiary of German support to multilateral donors such as the European Union (EU) and the World Bank.
Germany provides about 23 percent of EU assistance to Malawi and is also a major contributor to the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (Hipc) initiative which seeks to provide a permanent exit from unsustainable debt for the poorest countries.
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