Mzuzu’s Mapale Health Centre ‘pregnant’ with problems

As the country’s public health services continue to collapse, Mapale Health Centre in Mzuzu has become a nightmare for pregnant women who are facing a lot of challenges due to lack of resources at the facility.

Malawi24’s findings during a recent visit, found that there are very few medics who attend to patients including pregnant women at the facility.

This is making these pregnant women to be facing some delays before they are attended to. Women who spoke to this publication on Sunday urged government to consider increasing staff to ease the problem at the facility.

“We are many these days so we need a lot of doctors to our attention otherwise we are facing a lot of challenges with the current situation,” said one of the pregnant women who was waiting to be assisted.

She also urged government to speed up the construction of a guardian shelter since most guardians are also facing a lot of challenges at the facility.

“They spend time in downpours. There is no guardian shelter here to accommodate them. This is another concern because the problem results in guardians ending up suffering from various diseases like malaria because of spending time in rains,” she added.

This comes barely a week after legislator for the city, Leonard Njikho, asked the ministry of health to consider improving health facilities in his constituency.

He said with the growing population in the city it has become a challenge for many to access quality medical services due to lack of health facilities and resources in the available hospitals in the city.

“I would have loved if the ministry of health can consider building some more health centres across Mzuzu because the current situation is terrible. They must also improve the available ones so that people must be accessing quality health care they deserve,” said Njikho.

In response to the call, minister of health Peter Kumpalume assured people in Mzuzu that government will look into the issue.

However, publicist in the ministry Adrian Chikumbe emphatically told our reporter that with the current economic meltdown the country is going through, people of Mzuzu must wait longer because the available funds the ministry has are not meant for such projects.