Rotary Club in Malawi is holding Family Health Days in Lilongwe where free health services are being provided to communities through health centres in the district.
The program was launched on Thursday and services are being offered at Area 18, Biwi, Kawale Area 25 and Kabudula health centres in Lilongwe.
Under the K78 million program, the Rotary Club is using government health centres but is providing resources such as medicine and support to staff.
Starting from Thursday ending today, a person or members of a whole family have been accessing services at one of the health centres
“We have done this because people are keeping diseases in their homes which are spreading without knowledge of hospitals and by the time we realise that this is a problem, the disease has already spread,” said national coordinator for the program, Rotarian Vincent Sikelo.
Chief Clinical Officer for Area 18 Health Centre Kedson Masiyano said the initiative will boost health seeking behaviour as people would be encouraged to go to hospital even when they are not sick instead of keeping diseases such as high blood pressure and diabetes in their homes.
“Some of these diseases are what we call silent killers because people cannot be able to detect so it is important for people come and get tested as they would be able to receive early treatment which can save their lives,” said Dr. Masiyano.
He added that on the first day they had already helped a lot of patients in addition to normal patients and he expected that more people would turn up in the remaining days.
Area 18 Health Centre has a catchment area of 280,000 people covering areas such as Kauma, Area 18, Mtandire and Piyasani.
Group Village headman Sandram Banda of the area said cases of sudden deaths where people just collapse and die seem to be on the rise because people do not have a habit of getting tested.
He added that he had already sent messages to people in his area to go to the hospital and receive health care.
Rotary Club is expected to conduct similar activities at health centres in Blantyre, Zomba and Mzuzu.
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