Ministry of Health and Sanitation Principal Secretary (PS) for Administration Bestone Chisamile has called on development partners to support the enhancement of community health services in the country to effectively serve the rural masses.
Speaking in Dowa on Friday during the Integrated Health Day commemorations, the PS said the ministry has embarked on several activities aimed at reaching people with quality health services, but there are still challenges affecting health service delivery at community level.
He said challenges include inadequate human and financial resources, lack of reliable transport system and some hard-to-reach areas in the country have no health posts.
Said Chisamile: “The majority of our population, 81.5 percent, are in rural areas and 24 percent of them are living beyond an eight-kilometre radius from the nearest health facility.”
He has since urged partners help to support government to ensure that there are more community health workers to meet the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommendation of one health surveillance assistant per 1000 population.
Said Chisamile: “Currently, one health surveillance assistant serves a population of about 1 216. There is need to support the health sector with infrastructure such as health posts and reliable transport for community health workers.
“We also need to scale -up integrated community health information system especially in the hard to reach areas.”
In his remarks, Dowa District Council chairperson Billy Mtika said besides transport, there is a need to ensure that health workers are provided with houses.
“Health facilities also experience drug stockouts as such people are not properly served. There is need to ensure health facilities have drugs all the time,” he said.
One of the participating partners, World Bicycle Relief country director Anthony Kinnaird said the organisation has supported the health sector with 4 353 bicycles since 2017, adding that the bicycles are having an impact in community health service delivery.
He said 70 percent of health facilities supported with bicycles now run functional outreach clinics, bringing care closer to families who need it most.
Malawi needs about 5 000 health posts for communities to access healthcare service within a radius of five kilometres. Universal health coverage requires that people should not walk a distance of over five kilometres to access quality health care.
