Malnutrition haunts inmates

F

rail young men chained to sickbeds at Thyolo District Hospital personify surging malnutrition feared to have claimed a life at Bvumbwe Prison last week.

The development coincides with a Malawi Human Rights Commission (MHRC) probe into claims that inmates on anti-retroviral therapy at Zomba Central Prison in the old capital are surviving on their own stools.

Prisoners at Bvumbwe with debilitating wasting say the once-a-day meals want of nutrition and related diseases have turned the correctional facility for young offenders into a torture chamber.

The influx of patients with nutritional conditions could be a sign that “something is terribly wrong”, stated alarmed healthcare workers at Thyolo District Hospital.

One healthcare worker explained: “There are three prisons in Thyolo, but it is shocking that all the six patients admitted with severe and moderate malnutrition in the past two weeks came from Bvumbwe.”

The caregivers implored prisons to stop serving a single diet for inmates and using food as punishment.

“Children need at least three nutritious meals because they are still growing, so do patients for treatment to work,” the source said.

‘Life is hard’

The hospital staff have since petitioned Thyolo district commissioner (DC) to fund a fact-finding team to assess the prison’s diet, sanitation, hygiene and affected population.

Three patients admitted to Thyolo District Hospital lamented that sometimes they go to bed hungry, even when taken ill. They said the one-diet-fits-all arrangement has left about a third of the prison’s nearly 290 inmates with malnutrition.

During a visit to the male ward at Thyolo District Hospital yesterday, 19-year-old Promise Kondowe was seen taking milk used to treat severe acute malnutrition with complications in children, apparently draining donor-funded supplies for patients aged below 15.

Next to him was 22-year-old Evance Jamali, diagnosed with severe anaemia or insufficient iron in his bloodstream, who had just undergone a transfusion to replenish red blood cells.

Across the aisle in the same ward was Ronex Stafford presented with anaemia and a bacterial infection called sepsis, the conditions medics attributed to poor nutrition.

“Life is hard,” muttered Kondowe, who is completing a two-year jail sentence for stealing a mobile phone in Blantyre, a crime he still denies. 

He was referred to Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (Qech) in Blantyre on Saturday when his situation worsened.

In an interview, Mariam Mangulama, his grandmother and primary guardian, said the boy’s mother, who lives in South Africa, would not have asked authorities to shift him from Chichiri Prison in Blantyre “had she known” what youthful inmates endure at Bvumbwe.

She stated: “I implore the government to do something about this because we may lose more lives unless the torture happening at Bvumbwe Prison stops. If the government cannot feed and protect them, then just release them.”

His stature looking smaller than his age, Jamali said two of six cells at Bvumbwe Prison house more than 45 patients each, with malnutrition, scabies and malaria being the common diseases.

“I came here with five others, but my colleagues have been referred to Qech,” he said.

A pair was taken to Qech due to nutrition-related liver complications and other internal conditions, The Nation can reveal.

The wasting teenagers interviewed in Thyolo had sores all over their bottoms, which they attribute to beatings by bullies called anyapala, who reportedly attack young inmates about to walk free.

The Nation asked Malawi Prison Service spokesperson Chimwemwe Shaba for an official stance on the nutrition crisis, including what they are doing to avert malnutrition in the country’s overcrowded prisons.

However, he only sent an assuring message via WhatsApp which read:  “Chief, will come back. Ndili pa function [I am attending an event, I will get back to you].”

Diet on trial

The critical patients in agony put a human face to the breakdown in prison nutrition, which spiked last October when inmates were going up to three days without a meal.

The monotonous prison diet, strictly nsima with beans or pigeon peas without salt and cooking oil, went on trial in 2009 when inmate Gable Masangano moved the High Court of Malawi to reaffirm that prisoners have a right to food, medical care, clothing and humane treatment.

In 2018, seven inmates on multidrug-resistant tuberculosis treatment also petitioned the High Court to affirm their right to humane treatment, including nutritious food.

The petitioners, backed by the Centre for Human Rights Education, Advice and Assistance (Chreaa), are awaiting High Court Judge Zione Ntaba’s verdict in the case opened in October 2018.

When asked about the Bvumbwe situation, Chreaa executive director Victor Chagunyuka Mhango said the monotonous prison diet does not conform to the applicable standards, especially for persons requiring special meals such as patients and the youth.

He stated: “This is such upsetting news. It’s as if all the government promises of last year just fell apart.

“This is against Rule 22 of Nelson Mandela Rules which requires that every prisoner shall be provided with wholesome quality and well-prepared food of nutritional value adequate for health and strength by the prison administration at the usual hours of feeding. The obligation of taking care of prisoners is in the hands of prisons.”

In an interview yesterday, MHRC executive secretary Habiba Osman said the taxpayer-financed human rights protection body is alarmed and inundated by reports of malnutrition in the country’s overcrowded but underfunded prisons.

She said: “This is worrisome, considering that the right to food in prisons remains problematic not only in Thyolo, but nationwide. We have also received whistleblowers’ allegations that it’s happening at Mzuzu Prison.

“Just last week, our legal committee was in Zomba where it was investigating claims that prisoners on antiretroviral treatment are eating their own faeces. Of course, some of the claims were not true, but what is true is that the right to food is at stake.”

High Court Judge Kenan Manda, who chairs the Prisons Inspectorate created by the Constitution to safeguard prisoners’ rights, could not be reached yesterday.

However, the prison inspectors’ report released after mandatory visits to prisons and police cells in 2021 shows there were no improvements in food and nutrition due to skyrocketing food prices.

“The failure to provide adequate food and medical care is a serious breach of national and international legal and policy instruments and amounts to a breach of human rights,” the report reads in part.

Prisons Service records show that the number of inmates across the country’s prisons fluctuates between 11 000 and 13 000 against a design capacity of 8 000.

Various stakeholders have blamed the prison decongestion on an archaic Prisons Act that does not provide room for decongestion.

The Prisons Act was enacted on April 23 1956 to provide for the establishment of prisons within Malawi and a Prison Service, among others.