Ending cholera in schools

In 2023, Joel Donald, a Standard Eight boy at Kapeni Demonstration Primary School in Blantyre City, was bedridden with cholera.

“I missed classes and my friends after spending two weeks at Limbe Health Centre and one healing at home,” he recalls.

Joel returned to school shortly after his two schoolmates died from the disease fuelled by unsafe water and poor sanitation.

“I feel lucky. It was terrifying and my class performance suffered. I dropped from position five to 25 as my friends were taunting me,” he recalls.

The 14-year – old encourages his peers to drink clean water, tidy their surroundings and wash their hands with soap to prevent cholera.

The country’s deadliest cholera outbreak claimed 1 760 lives from the 58 944 reported cases, according to the Ministry of Health.

It affected over 200 learners at the school opened in 1969.

In January 2023, the Ministry of Education postponed school opening by two weeks in the worst-affected cities of Blantyre and Lilongwe.

Kapeni, the worst-hit school in Blantyre, was closed on two separate occasions, first when the cholera outbreak struck and later due to flooding resulting from the impact of Cyclone Freddy when people displaced from Soche Hill occupied 13 classrooms at the school.

“During the break, we were overwhelmed by reports of students catching cholera. We recorded 170 girls and 35 girls. Two boys died,” says shift headteacher Mary Chadza Pedro.

Her school has 7165 children and 97 teachers split into two shifts.

USAid, in partnership with Unicef, supported the Government of Malawi in closing schools’ water, sanitation and hygiene gaps. The project enabled the school to pay outstanding water bills to Blantyre Water Board to reconnect the school, install two taps on campus, construct five toilets and train teachers and other stakeholders in cholera prevention, including soap-making.

The school’s sole tap had already run dry, and pipes were rusting in disuse when Pedro arrived in 2015.

Today, the rehabilitated system with three taps brings clean water closer for learners and teachers to keep their hands, classroom, kitchen and toilets clean.

“The timely support from Unicef helped us combat the preventable disease outbreak and reduce fierce scrambles for water at our overwhelmed borehole which frequently breaks down. Children no longer bring drinking water in dirty bottles from home,” says Pedro.

The children are spotted washing hands with soap from the buckets from Unicef by the doorstep of every classroom.

“Soap is readily available in all handwashing stations because we produce it here. We used to spend two weeks without soap when we were relying on donations and our meagre school improvement grants,” Pedro states.

Five teachers and five representatives of the school management committee (SMC), mother group and parents-teacher association participated in the soap-making training at Limbe Teacher Development Centre.

They produce six bars of soap from small containers and cut each into six tablets for hand hygiene, with the hope to sell some of it and make money for the school once they start making a lot of soap.

“Sanitation and hygiene with safe water and handwashing keep our school clean and safe for all. Any soap can remove germs,” says SMC treasurer Janet Lungu.

To Kapeni Mother Group treasurer Mary Liwonde, soap-making mirrors a strong partnership to make cholera history.

“Children go to school to learn, not to catch diseases. We can create a safe learning environment if parents, teachers, learners and partners such as Unicef work together,” she says.

Marjory Banda, who coordinates health, nutrition, HIV and Aids and gender initiatives in Blantyre’s schools, says Unicef support helped sustain teaching and learning during the cholera emergency.

“Blantyre was hit hard. We have 62 schools, but less than 20 were cholera-free. Unicef supported cholera prevention efforts in 25 rural schools and 25 urban ones for children to continue learning safely,” she says.

For Joel, who aspires to a law career, the fight against cholera must continue beyond recurrent outbreaks.

“No child should endure what I experienced,” he says.