In September 2023, Access Health Africa will send three surgical teams to Malawi to provide life-changing surgical care to patients.
The bottom line? We need to raise $10,000 to cover this surgical trip! We will spend 4+ days working at the rural Kabudula Community Hospital, operate on 80+ patients, and train 10+ local medical providers.
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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Three US-based surgeons and medical staff.
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The team will focus on keloids, lipomas, hernia repairs, and similar procedures.
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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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The team going to Malawi in September 2023 will partner with Mitundu Community Hospital.
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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.
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AHA primarily partners with three facilities: Kamuzu Central Hospital (KCH), Kabudula Community Hospital (Kab), and Mitundu Community Hospital (Mitundu). 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 and Mitundu, community hospitals intended to be between primary and secondary care.
Building capacity at Mitundu and 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 Kab, Mitundu, 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.