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Phalombe residents bid bye to deadly delays

From traditional leaders to locals, excitement and hope have engulfed people of Phalombe following the opening of the first district hospital after decades of waiting in vain.

A family robbed of its royal breadwinner partly by delayed access to healthcare in the district has expressed its postponed joy following the opening of the district’s main referral hospital.

Kaduya: The district lost a lot of lives

Speaking in an interview, Linly Nankhuni, the third-born daughter of fallen Senior Chief Kaduya who died in Zomba after falling unconscious in a motorcycle accident in Phalombe, was admitted to Phalombe District Hospital on Thursday, two days after President Lazarus Chakwera commissioned the facility.

Clinicians at Migowi Health Centre referred the four-month pregnant woman to the new district hospital around midnight, two hours after she collapsed due to high blood pressure and low red blood cells.

She narrated: “I was still unconscious when an ambulance from Migowi took me to the new hospital around midnight. Health workers there urgently treated me.

“Who would have thought that patients in Phalombe would find it so easy to access quality health care? Previously, we used to endure long trips and financial hardship that previously left many poor dying from treatable conditions.”

The 34-year-old mother of three was speaking in an exclusive interview on Sunday, her fourth day in the hospital ward and the 10th anniversary of her father’s burial.

Nankhuni had temporarily left the sickbed at the K30 billion facility located about a kilometre away, to “enjoy some fresh air” and join her family in a muted memorial.

And she was stunned by the dramatic ease in access to life-saving services Phalombe citizens could only get from central hospitals in  Zomba or Blantyre, a 90-minute trip that costs a patient and a guardian not less than K10 000.

Nankhuni restated the government’s obligation to ensure Malawians in all districts get quality health services close to where they live without suffering deadly delays and financial burdens.

She reckoned: “My father would not have died had the government not wasted a lot of time politicking about the long-awaited hospital. He was in a comma, so he needed to be treated as an emergency, but he had to be taken all the way to Zomba.

“The chief should be turning in his grave to see that we find it easy to get the services that he could not receive in this district when there was no district hospital.”

The deceased chief, born Brighton Nankhuni, died aged 55 on October 14 2016 after falling headfirst when his motorcycle rammed into a woman going to a maize mill at Chinakanaka in Phalombe. The chief in comma experienced deadly delays to get quality health services as health workers shuttled him from Phalombe Health Centre to Holy Family Mission Hospital, only to breathe his last at Zomba Central Hospital.

To onlookers, his death epitomised the plight of Phalombe citizens who lament the lost decades when Parliament kept allocating billions for the construction of the district hospital, but nothing took shape on the ground.

But it “opened a huge hole” in the fallen chief’s family, says his widow Aida Raphael, 55.

The mother of nine says death fuelled by long trips to get health services deepen poverty among the deceased’s dependents.

Speaking in the shadow of her cracked house earmarked for demolition and relocation, Raphael narrated: “My husband was our pillar and breadwinner. He always worked hard to make sure we didn’t lack anything.

“Ours was a house of plenty, but everything changed when he died. Hunger crept in and school-going children dropped out one after another as I struggled to provide fees, clothes, pens, notebooks and other basics.”

But she can now afford a smile.

Raphael said: “With the new hospital, an emergency is not a death warrant. When one is involved in a road accident as did my husband, they will receive treatment before the situation goes out of hand.”

Current Senior Chief Kaduya, who succeeded her deceased uncle, says the family’s plight personifies the prevalent mood in the district of nearly 500 000 people.

To her, it offers duty-bearers, including the Ministry of Health, lessons on everything not to do at a time government promises to ensure no patient travels over five kilometres to get the health services they need.

Without a district hospital, overwhelmed health centres in Phalombe referred critical patients to Holy Family Catholic Hospital where government paid about K20 million a month in citizens’ bills based on a service-level agreement.

The chief said: “The district lost a lot of lives to treatable conditions while money meant for the hospital was going unaccounted for.”

During its opening, the President said the 250-bed facility adorned with 75 staff houses symbolises several things in State-sponsored service delivery.

He said: “First, it is a symbol of my government’s commitment to complete projects that were not completed by the previous government [led by Peter Mutharika].

“Second, it is a symbol of proper use of public funds by my administration. Third, it’s a symbol of government’s commitment to providing good health service here in Phalombe.”

The President promised that government will construct three more district hospitals in Chikwawa, Dowa and Rumphi. This excludes the island district of Likoma where about 15 000 Malawians rely on St Peter’s Hospital owned by the an Anglican Church.

However, Senior Chief Kaduya warns that the hospital may not live up to its promise unless government increases funding for medicines and essential supplies.

“I thank government for heeding our cry, which is the cry of the rural majority who rely on public hospitals. No one should go through the experience we have endured.

“But constructing hospitals is one thing and supporting them to save lives is another. The government should ensure that every hospital has adequate medicine so patients do not die of treatable conditions. A hospital without medicine is just a building.”

The Phalombe District Hospital project has taken two decades to take off since it was mooted during the administration of the United Democratic Front under former president Bakili Muluzi.

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