The Medical Council of Malawi (MCM) board is expected to commence disciplinary hearing on the management of Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (QECH) over an industrial action that took place about two months ago at the hospital\u2019s Adult, Emergency and Trauma Centre.<\/p>\n
MCM, Registrar Abel Kawonga said yesterday his board is scheduled to start hearing the matter today.\u00a0 \u201cWe have reports of a patient with obstructed intestinal problem who was neglected at the facility. Under normal scenario, the facility ought to have left some skeletal staff to attend to such situations which are emergency in nature,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Speaking on the spate of industrial actions in hospitals, Kawonga said \u201cin such situations we make remedial arrangements to bring the parties on a table to avoid such a situation. But we mostly act based on reports and concerns of people.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost people do not know what constitutes abuse from health practitioners. However, it has always been our desire to conduct awareness exercises but financial limitations constrain us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Recent industrial actions include those at the Kamuzu Central Hospital (KCH), Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (QECH) and recently those from the Christian Health Association of Malawi (Cham) facilities.<\/p>\n
However, Medical Association of Malawi President, Dr. Edgar Kuchingale says in order to minimize harm, medical ethics call for workers not to close critical services such as maternity, theatre and other emergency services in such times. \u201cWe are against people going to strike and disrupting all services at the facility. At no time should health practitioners shut down the whole facility.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s why before people go to strike, they need to contact us for advice on how to deal with the professional gap in the course of the action,\u201d he said. Labour lawyer, Mauya Msuku, however, says<\/p>\n
awareness of the balance between ethical issues and rights could be a missing point. \u201cEvery profession has ethics but they should be balanced with their rights. Assuming employees give notice, should they be stopped on the basis of morals? \u201cNo, ethics must be balanced with rights to fair labour practices. Assuming laws allow employees to strike, even for those that want to strike, the law has put in place safeguard measures,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Medical Council of Malawi (MCM) board is expected to commence disciplinary hearing on the management of Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (QECH) over an industrial action that took place about two months ago at the hospital\u2019s Adult, Emergency and Trauma Centre. MCM, Registrar Abel Kawonga said yesterday his board is scheduled to start hearing the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3675,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3674","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\/3674","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=3674"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3676,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3674\/revisions\/3676"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}