Some pregnant women in Mangochi have said they have no option but to be delivering at Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs) as healthy facilities are far from their area.<\/p>\n
They also cited the introduction of hospital fees in Cham hospitals as another reason for them not to seek help from recommended health facilities.<\/p>\n
Government, through the Ministry of Health, imposed a ban on TBAs as one way of encouraging women to deliver at hospitals with the help of skilled medical personnel.<\/p>\n
But the ban is failing to be effectively implemented due to failure by authorities to increase access to health services by constructing health facilities in rural areas where the majority of Malawians are located.<\/p>\n
Speaking during an open day organised by the White Ribbon Alliance Malawi, which was held at Njereza in Mangochi, several women openly challenged authorities that, they will not stop using the TBAs as there are no hospitals nearby to assist them.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou are telling us to go to the hospitals; but where are the hospitals?\u201d questioned Meliya Alli of group village headman John Sawadi.<\/p>\n
She continued to challenge that if government wants them to stop using the TBAs, it should provide them with clinics as well as negotiate with Cham to remove a K10,000 fee which they are charged whenever they want to deliver at the hospital.<\/p>\n
In his remarks, Sawadi said as traditional leaders, they stopped imposing a fine on women who deliver at home because most of the people in the area are poor and they cannot afford to pay the fee at private hospitals.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe closest public hospital is over 40 kilometres from here. When we ask for ambulances at the hospital they tell us that there is no fuel, hence it is difficult for women to walk that distance when their time to deliver has come,\u201d said Sawadi.<\/p>\n
While appreciating the women\u2019s concerns, National Coordinator for White Ribbon Alliance Malawi, Nancy Kamwendo, encouraged women to avoid creating emergencies by among other things going to the hospital earlier.<\/p>\n
\u201cTheir concern is similar to women in Salima. But there is no harm in going to the hospital a week earlier because by doing that, you will give a chance to medical personnel to assess you,\u201d said Kamwendo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some pregnant women in Mangochi have said they have no option but to be delivering at Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs) as healthy facilities are far from their area. They also cited the introduction of hospital fees in Cham hospitals as another reason for them not to seek help from recommended health facilities. Government, through the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":27080,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27077","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\/27077","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=27077"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27081,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27077\/revisions\/27081"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}