Norway renovates KCH intensive care unit

The government of Norway, through the Norwegian Church Aid (NCA), is renovating and upgrading the intensive care unit (ICU) at Kamuzu Central Hospital (KCH) in Lilongwe.

Speaking at the ground breaking ceremony marking the start of construction works last week, the outgoing Norwegian Deputy Ambassador and Charge’ d’affaires Jan Olsson said the project is part of integrated interventions aimed at addressing critical infrastructure shortfalls at the health facility.

Said Olsson: “Despite reasonable investments in health infrastructure by government, the country’s public health institutions, including KCH, continue to contend with inadequate infrastructure. Service delivery at KCH also continues to suffer from congestion and poor service delivery due to chronic shortage of health care workers, obsolete and dysfunctional equipment.”

He then announced that through the Norwegian Programme Capacity Development in Higher Education and Research for Development (Norhed), Norway is training twelve young Malawian doctors to become surgeons.

In her remarks, Minister of Health Jean Kalilani expressed gratitude to the government of Norway especially because the construction works will include rehabilitation of the hospital’s other three major theatres as well as upgrading the paediatric wards into state-of-the-art facilities.

The renovations on the ICU and high dependence unit (HDU) at KCH will cost K633 million and are

expected to end December this year.

Last month, NCA inaugurated a maternity wing and two staff houses it constructed at Lumbadzi Health Centre.