Chitsime
Health workers are living in fear at Nandumbo Health Centre in Balaka District, following a recent attack, by a yet to be identified person on a health surveillance assistant.
Balaka District Chief Preventive Officer, Blessings Chitsime, said the recent threat happened on Thursday, when an unknown person visited the facility and beat up a health worker.
Chitsime said it is unfortunate that despite efforts to engage the community and local leaders, they are still receiving threats.
“On Thursday, the health centre in-charge informed the director of health and management about the current incident at Nandumbo health centre whereby a certain unknown man entered the treatment sites and started beating health workers, one HSA who was on duty was beaten and a Nurse had to run away. To us that’s unwelcome behaviour which we didn’t expect to happen anymore.
“After having thorough discussion and after engaging the local leaders, the Traditional authorities, village headmen and all influencial leaders from that facility to bring in peace we are very saddened seeing that the issue is still happening and this is sad,” explained Chitsime.
Chitsime also hinted that few weeks ago they had an incident whereby the communities entered the Cholera treatment sites and stoned the treatment site.
“To us this is very very uncommendable behaviour shown by the people around the facility. As health workers our objective is one to save lives and to ensure health life sustainance. So as health workers we are very saddened with the behaviour but still we are on the ground implementing Cholera prevention and control interventions and also ensuring that those who are sick are getting quality treatment for life sustainance that our overall objective as Balaka hospital,” said Chitsime.
According to Chitsime, despite the uncalled for behaviour of the communities around the facility, Nandumbo health centre is one of the facilities in the district that is reporting more cases.
Chitsime also hinted that as Balaka District they are implementing quite a number of interventions to contain the cholera outbreak and one of the interventions is to engage the community local leaders.
“We need all key players on the ground to play a positive role towards containing the outbreak. So we are engaging local leaders village headman, traditional authorities, local leaders such as the market committees. We are engaging the market committees to assist in disseminating the right information on Cholera prevention and control. We are engaging the market committees to assist in hygiene and sanitation promotion in the markets,” explained Chitsime.
So far Balaka District has registered 2202 cholera cases with 67 deaths.
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