M’mbelwa District Council has constructed a K71 million staff house at Mtuzuzu Health Post in Mzimba to ease accommodation challenges for the midwife assistant at the facility.
The council built the house with the World Bank-funded Governance to Enable Service Delivery (Gesd) programme as part of plans to improve infrastructure to enhance service delivery.
The council’s director of public works Allan Chitete said they undertook the project to ensure that healthcare workers live close to the facility.
“We constructed the health post and felt it was important to provide a complete package by ensuring that a health worker lives right at the facility,” he said.
Mzimba district director of health services and sanitation Prince Chirwa described the staff house as a crucial incentive for health workers.
“Such houses motivate health workers. We often face staffing challenges in hard-to-reach areas, so this development will help our staff to stay and work effectively within the facility,” he said.
The facility’s midwife Doreen Chikafa said the new house has transformed her working conditions and ability to respond to patients.
“Now I attend to patients in time, even at night, because they are able to come and wake me up easily,” she said.
A community member, Abigail Chirwa, also welcomed the development, saying it has eased challenges people faced when seeking medical assistance.
“In the past, we would go to the facility and find no nurse available as she lived some distance away. But now that she lives nearby, we can easily reach her, even at night,” she said
