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Road cuts disrupt health care

day in Chikwawa, a 50-year-old woman limped in agony, her battered body precariously leaning on her husband’s shoulder.

The story of love in the eye of a storm started late in the night when a falling wall crashed Esther Fulakusi’s left arm in Mkumiza Village near Makande Market in Chikwawa South.

On arrival at Bereu, she sighed with relief and discomfort as her frail frame slumped to the the edge of a road cut off by flash floods that had left her homeless.

“I’m in terrible pain,” she whispered, sitting down. “My husband took me to Makande Health Centre around 3am after the midnight tragedy, but I was only referred to Chikwawa District Hospital. There was no ambulance.”

Fulakusi, one of 158 Malawians injured by Tropical Storm Ana, coughed K20 000 to get her bones scanned at the district hospital. Before the storm, the two-way trip used to cost half the fare.

Young men assist Fulakusi to cross a shattered section on M1 at Bereu

To cross the road cuts, travellers have to pay young men to take them across the new divides.

“At Makande, we left several people injured by the stormy torrents waiting for an ambulance because they cannot afford the trip to Chikwawa,” said Fulakusi’s husband after crossing the ripped section.

For the couple, the sights of people with bandaged limbs being assisted to cross the shattered roads personify costly disruptions in transport, including ambulance services.

In the Shire Valley, travellers, including patients who cannot get health services close to their homes, now pay extra costs.

“This is daylight robbery. These people are cashing in on our misery,” said Fulakusi after being helped to cross the huge gap in M1, the country’s largest transport corridor.

The road suffered six breakages in the worst hit district, making relief efforts slow and costly.

Since tragedy struck, transport fares in the Shire Valley have surged by almost half.

The woman with a fractured arm shelled twice the cost of the medical trip before stormy torrents caused silted rivers to burst their banks and break roads. The extra spending mostly went to nagging pieceworkers who charge K500 to K1 000 to help commuters cross. The travel costs have further been ballooned by disruption in fuel supply and rising desperation in affected zones.

The transport shocks have fuelled hiccups in the supply of drugs and essential medical supplies for Chikwawa and Nsanje, where Cyclone Ana has displaced almost 73 000 people and affected 460 000.

The Department of Disaster Affairs Management Affairs (Dodma)laments slow delivery of vital supplies to cut-off areas, with more roads and bridges at risk of further damage if rains persist.

“Sections on seven main tarmac roads, 10 secondary roads and numerous tertiary and district roads got washed away, making most of the affected areas, including evacuation camps, inaccessible by road,” reads the situation report released by Charles Kalemba, the Commissioner of Dodma.

Humanitarian workers at the emergency operation command centre call for urgent road repair to speed up relief items.

And the roads still in shambles have disturbed vital health services, forcing people to pay extra costs to access life-saving services.

Estere Tsoka, Unicef focal person at the emergency operation centre, calls for urgent intervention to put health services closer to affected populations reduced to islands.

She stated: “In affected communities, the needs are many. In the health sector, because of the roads that have been cut off, there is need for ambulances and mobile clinics to rescue patients in these areas that have become inaccessible so that they can access services close to where they live.

“Whatever alternative means is available is needed as a matter of urgency to serve lives.”

The national policy requires everyone to access health services they need close to where they live, without enduring any financial hardship.

However, it remains unattainable as flooding in Chikwawa left only 21 out of 24 health centres in Chikwawa accessible.

Bereu Health Centre, which serves 23 000 people, was abandoned for a week as every room was flooded. The facility lost medicines, medical records and other vital supplies to the rainstorm.

Chikwawa Health Office reports that the rainstorm has displaced 32 community health workers and six health attendants, now living in crowded camps.

In Mwanza, road cuts disrupted ambulance services from Kunenekude Health Centre.

But Nsanje was hit the hardest as medical supplies had to be carried on peoples’ heads across six damaged road sections in Chikwawa. Dodma reports that the southernmost district struggled to provide essential medical supplies, including blood products and oxygen due.

“Due to a faulty generator and lack of fuel, the district hospital has experienced repeated blackouts, rendering it unable to provide life-saving services,” reads the report in part

Two facilities—Makhanga Health Centre and Mchaja Health Post—suspended services due to flooding, as did Bereu. The shattered roads also disrupted referrals from affected communities to district and central hospitals.   

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