Nurses in the country have described the year 2016 as a difficult year since they faced a lot of challenges in providing services to the general public.
President of National organisation of Nurses and Midwives (NONM) Dorothy Ngoma explained that in many hospitals across the country there are a few resources, a situation which has affected health service delivery over the past 12 months.
She revealed that the country’s hospital have no drugs as such patients are referred from district hospitals to central hospitals.
“When you go now in the hospitals you will find that most of the times there are no drugs, patients are being referred from the lowest to highest level to be given proper treatment,” she said.
She also lamented that the drug shortage is forcing poor people to buy drugs from pharmacies while those who cannot afford to buy are suffering.
Ngoma added that the country has also lost Malawians this year due to shortage of resources in hospitals.
Recently, various civil society organisations expressed concern over the decrease in funding to the health sector.
The organisations noted that over the past five years, government’s spending on health sector has averaged around 10 percent of the national budget which is a decline from 12 percent of the national cake in the 2012/13 financial year.
