In January 2023, Access Health Africa will send a surgical team to Malawi to tackle the backlog of colostomy reversals that are needed in the capital city of Lilongwe.
To celebrate this trip and ensure it is a success, we are raising $5,000!
Our goal is simple: to provide free medical and surgical services that patients are otherwise unable to access. In Malawi, there is one doctor for 53,000 citizens and just one surgeon per 1,000,000 people! In resource-strapped Malawi, there is a large patient backlog of those whose treatment was postponed due to COVID-19.
Will you join our growing list of supporters? Every dollar goes a long way in Malawi. Just $50 will fund an entire surgery and $400 will cover medication for all patients.
We thank you for your support and look forward to sharing our work with you.
Fundraising Progress
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A team of five medical and surgical professionals are going on this trip to Malawi.
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This team will focus on colostomy reversals. As “elective surgeries,” colostomy reversals are often postponed to make way for more urgent cases. These procedures, however, are vital to quality of life.
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We’ll post regular updates to our blog, Facebook page, and Instagram account leading up to the trip and while the team is in-country.
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Malawi has a mixed, three-tiered healthcare system that includes primary through tertiary care via both public and private facilities. Primary care includes health centers and village clinics, 24 district hospitals handle secondary care, and four central hospitals are intended to handle tertiary care. This system, however, does not always work due to lack of funding, staffing, resources, and coordination. In Lilongwe District, where AHA’s work is focused, Bwaila Hospital is the intended district hospital. Because it lacks a general ward but has a maternity ward, only obstetrics can be referred to Bwaila while most surgical cases are referred directly to the tertiary Kamuzu Central (KCH). Since KCH absorbs secondary- and primary-level cases from within Lilongwe District in addition to tertiary referrals, KCH is extremely overburdened.
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AHA primarily partners with two facilities: Kamuzu Central Hospital (KCH) and Kabudula Community Hospital (Kab). KCH is a public hospital and is the tertiary referral center for the Central Region of Malawi, serving over five million persons and receiving referrals from Kab, a community hospital intended to be between primary and secondary care. Building capacity at Kab not only serves patients closer to home, but also relieves the burden of referrals to KCH, allowing KCH to direct more attention towards advanced cases as intended. Building capacity at KCH increases the level of tertiary care available in Malawi, since it is the final referral point within the country for advanced cases. AHA volunteers fill gaps in Malawi’s health system including staffing (lack of enough doctors/surgeons), materials for surgery (always in short supply in the public system), and mentorship/training (increasing skills of existing staff) at both Kab and KCH.
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In Malawi, less than 13% of the government’s budget is allocated to healthcare, resulting in a shortage of healthcare professionals. One of the poorest nations in the world, Malawi is a country where 7% of children die before their fifth birthday, and 90% of those providing surgery on over 50,000 people each year are not trained surgeons. There is one physician per 53,000 Malawians, and one surgeon for over one million people. Millions of Malawians are unable to access surgical, medical, and dental care that they need.