Lilongwe Water Board (LWB) has rendered support to Bwaila Hospital by donating a water tank that contains 100,000 litres of water which can serve more than 2,000 people per day.
The director of Health Services at the hospital, Dr. Wilson Ching’ani, said that the facility, which is one of the busiest labor wards in the Southern part of Africa and delivers 60 to 70 women per day, requires adequate water for its daily basis operations.
He added that the referral hospital, which serves 20,000 people per month, was one of the hospitals that reported a lot of Cholera cases recently due to inadequate water considering that a lot of services that the hospital conducts require the availability of water every time, as such, the donation of the water tank is timely.
A water tank at Bwaila Hospital.
“We are very grateful for this gesture. We have been pressuring the Lilongwe Water Board on the same issue, and now here we are, we have a big tank. We have a catchment area of 264,000 hectares and serve half a million people. We are very committed to taking care of this donation. I am pleading with my fellow workers to work in collaboration with our government so that we continue experiencing this kind of donation,” he said.
On her part, Minister of Water and Sanitation, Abida Sidik Mia, said that the government wants to ensure that health facilities in the country have adequate water to continue serving lives and also to make sure that those in rural areas have clean water.
Mia added that President Lazarus Chakwera’s vision is to ensure that every household has a free connection to piped water both in rural and urban areas so that everyone has access to potable water.
In his speech, Lilongwe Water Board Board Chairperson, Inkosi ya Makosi Mbelwa assured the gathering that the board will take their role of supplying water continuously to a lot of communities in the country, especially in the health facilities, considering that maternal health is important and having clean and portable water is a must.
Apart from donating the water tank, LWB has also donated a kiosk at Biwi and an office in Area 23.
