Malawians have been urged to actively hold duty-bearers accountable for improved health services if there is to be any meaningful change in the healthcare delivery system in the country.<\/p>\n
Foundation for Community Support Services (Focus) Monitoring and Evaluation Officer, Vincent Ngwira, said government has not invested adequately in improving maternal, neonatal and child health programmes in the sector.<\/p>\n
\u201cConcentration of resources at district health offices (DHOs), erratic disbursement of resources and low per capita spending of about US$7.60 between 2009 and 2012 per capita per annum against World Health Organization (WHO) recommended US$38 are some of the challenges dogging our health sector,\u201d Ngwira said.<\/p>\n
He said poor and marginalised communities experience an imbalance in power and influence over the quality and coverage of health services resulting in limited ability and little opportunity to monitor, scrutinise and speak out on local health services.<\/p>\n
Ngwira further said Focus is, therefore, implementing \u2018Increasing Citizen Demand for Accountability and Transparency (ICiDAnT) for Maternal and Child Health\u2019 project in Balaka to address some of the challenges in the health sector.<\/p>\n
The project will be implemented in all the traditional authorities and health facilities in Balaka.<\/p>\n
Traditional Authority Sawali said due<\/p>\n
to cultural background in her area, many people do not have the ability to hold to account their duty-bearers as regards health service delivery.<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly people receive whatever mediocre health services that are delivered to them and they do not have the slightest chance or ability to start questioning why they are getting poor services in maternal and neonatal health, little or no resources in health centres, amongst other challenges,\u201d Sawali said.<\/p>\n
She said through Community Action Groups, citizens would be able to demand better services and hold duty-bearers accountable for resources.<\/p>\n
Focus works in Chitipa, Balaka and Karonga and the ICiDAnT project is expected to reach out to 54 417 people in Balaka. It is being implemented with funding from Scottish Government through Christian Aid amounting to 300 000 British Pound Sterling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Malawians have been urged to actively hold duty-bearers accountable for improved health services if there is to be any meaningful change in the healthcare delivery system in the country. Foundation for Community Support Services (Focus) Monitoring and Evaluation Officer, Vincent Ngwira, said government has not invested adequately in improving maternal, neonatal and child health programmes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":20994,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20990"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20995,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20990\/revisions\/20995"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}