According to research by the International Health Partners:
Malawi has the lowest ranking health system of any country not affected by a civil war. It even has a worse system than many war-torn countries. Most hospitals in the country don’t have a pharmacist. There are only around 200 pharmacists in the entire country. Poor transport infrastructure deters many from accessing the healthcare they need.
(Source: https://www.ihpuk.org/country/malawi)
With this extremely poor public healthcare in Malawi, it’s not surprising that only 46% of the population have access to formal healthcare. The average life expectancy is only 65 years!
For those who can access some kind of formal healthcare, it only costs a few pounds per patient to treat common illnesses, but this is an insurmountable sum to many when the average salary is less than 50 pence per day. There’s also no proactive healthcare provision within the country or testing for common conditions that can cause significant health impacts such as hypertension (high blood pressure), diabetes, and atrial fibrillation (irregular heartbeat).
Due to the sheer lack of money for effective healthcare provision and sanitisation within healthcare, the number of excess deaths in Malawi is estimated by Water Aid to be over 25,000 per year. They further add a cost of 11% of the government’s total spend on healthcare for something that is primarily avoidable.
There’s also no public health provision, sexual health services, or chronic disease management and there’s a lack of effective medication for the few illnesses that can be detected.
It’s VFs’ mission to reduce and cure the broken system as much as it is to cure the patients who rely on it. The Mwanyama clinic is the largest in the district and one of the largest in the region. It’s also the only free clinic for miles around. People will walk 20 miles or more from villages spanning the district to access its services, knowing that without this provision their only choice is to remain unwell and potentially die.
VF also provides the only chronic condition and health screening services in the country – completely free to the public and staffed by fully qualified clinicians. Zoe, the Clinical Lead is a UK NHS registered nurse with decades of experience and is a specialist in tropical medicine. She’s supported by a network of doctors, nurses, clinical officers and public health professionals, allowing VF to deliver low cost and no cost medical intervention, health screening clinics and chronic illness treatments to a population of thousands of people a week.
Further to this, VF annually receives visits from doctors, surgeons, paramedics, nurses, opticians, dentists, physiotherapists and midwives from all over the world, regularly providing specialist treatment from willing volunteers and professional clinicians.
