Mercy James hospital hits 10 000 surgeries

In July 2017, US pop superstar Madonna opened Malawi’s most advanced children’s hospital named after her adoptive daughter Mercy James. Its bright wards feature walls decorated with distinct murals, perhaps a distraction from the silent agonies of its young patients, their guardians and healthcare workers.

The 60-bed facility at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (QECH) offers relief to many families that could not afford surgeries their children need to live normally.

Since Madonna opened its doors, Mercy James Centre for Paediatric Surgery and Intensive Care has saved thousands of children, sending them smiling and with hope for better lives.

The winners include Dorothy Mpapa and her only 11-year-old child born with both male and female sexual organs.

In March, after the suspenseful tale of shame and secrecy for the single mother, physicians determined that the child’s genetics were predominantly female despite the external ambiguities.

She explains: “I became concerned about her sexual organs in 2018 when  she was aged four.

“I travelled from home in Ntcheu District to Kamuzu Central Hospital [KCH] in Lilongwe to consult doctors who told me she needed to be operated on, but had to wait until she was at least five years old.”

The baby reached five four months later, but the doctors informed Mpapa that the surgery could not be done locally.

“They recommended a trip to India, which costs $2 500 [about K3 million]. They assured me the hospital would source the money from donors, but the wait for financial assistance and a complete diagnosis would take four years to our dismay,” she explains.

Mpapa persistently contacted the physicians at KCH for updates in a desperate search for a solution to her daughter’s condition.

“I never fully understood or accepted my daughter’s condition. I wanted her to live like any other person,” she says.

After the frequent hospital trips and stays, Mpapa was delighted when she received a call to go to Mercy James.

Clad in a blue dress, the baby sits in a ward with ocean-themed wall paintings. Oblivious to her unique reality, the girl, who dreams of becoming a teacher, fidgets with her silver zip, probably yearning for the day she and her mother would leave the hospital for good.

As the pair await the next surgery, Maria Moyo cannot wait for her sixth-born son, perching on the sickbed nearby, to start relieving himself normally.

The boy was born apparently healthy almost a year ago. But within weeks, he could not excrete.

His concerned mother immediately took him for medical checkups in Thyolo, kick-starting a series of treatments and surgeries.

“As a month-old baby, my son’s stomach started swelling as if he was pregnant. His veins were so pronounced that I thought he was dying,” says the mother of six. “Seeing what the frail four-month-old baby was going through broke my heart.”

After medical tests, prayers and home remedies, Moyo consulted paediatricians at QECH, the Southern Region’s largest public hospital.

“The physicians here took three days to detect the problem. As we waited, they pumped out waste from his stomach. I watched silently, waiting for the day I would change or wash my son’s napkins,” she says.

Later, the medics told Moyo that the baby needed surgery as his intestines and nerves that control his bladder and bowel functions were defective.

On the day of the operation, the anxious mother waited for more than three hours to see her child emerge from the surgical theatre.

Following the surgery, the baby could excrete through a hole surgeons had made on his stomach.

Six months on, Moyo and the now 10-month-old baby have returned to the children’s hospital for a corrective surgery later this month.

The medics expect the boy to start answering the call of nature through the right channel when the expected surgery is over.

“The first surgery was such a success that we have not encountered any major setbacks in his recovery process. He can eat anything and is less irritable now. His life is a lot easier now,” says Moyo.

Such stories and smiles are piling as Mercy James children’s hospital clocks six years in July.

Professor Eric Borgstein, the lead paediatric surgeon at the centre, says that the facility has successfully conducted 10 000 surgeries since its inception.

These life-saving operations for children are supported by resources from several local and international organisations such as Kids Operating Room, an international charity that transforms operating rooms into spaces for children’s surgery, in partnership with the Ministry of Health.