Cases of maternal mortality could reach worrying levels if the vacancy rate in Malawi\u2019s health sector remains high.<\/p>\n
Research shows that Malawi\u2019s health sector has a 60 percent deficit of nursing and midwifery staff, which is one of the highest on the globe.<\/p>\n
Malawi has 8,626 positions for nurse midwife technicians but only 3,475 are filled.<\/p>\n
As of 2015, 475 women were dying out of every 100, 000 livebirths, a figure described by health rights defenders as worrisome.<\/p>\n
In the last two years, the government has not recruited health workers due to resource constraints.<\/p>\n
Enala Ngulu, leader of SASA [Swahili term for Start Action Now] women\u2019s group in Karonga under the Maternal and Neonatal Health Project by Foundation for Community Support Services (Focus) and Adventist Health, has faulted the government for failing to recruit additional workforce following the phasing out of Traditional Birth Attendants (TBAs).<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are looking at a situation where the few available health facilities have inadequate staff and are also situated hundreds of kilometres away from the people,\u201d said Nguru.<\/p>\n
Community midwife Charity Kamphinda, who serves a catchment area of about 32,000 people at Linyangwa in Kasungu, also decried the situation.<\/p>\n
She said she is often overwhelmed by work since a majority of women in the area cannot afford to raise transport money to travel to the maternity waiting home at the district hospital.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy appeal to the ministry is to bring skilled labourers closer to the communities. The present situation is burdening the available workforce which is detrimental to maternal and neonatal health initiatives being advocated by the government and its partners,\u201d said Kamphinda who administers an average of five deliveries a day.<\/p>\n
Dickson Kedeji, a Kenyan Health Rights activist who was recently in the country, said things would improve if there was political will.<\/p>\n
\u201cNon-governmental Organisations are doing their part; sometimes, they are doing what government is supposed to be doing, which is commendable. So, give them support by employing more people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ministry of Health spokesperson, Adrian Chikumbe, said the government is addressing the issue of shortage of staff using the new recruitment system.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have been receiving applications from various health specialists and we have recruited some. So, the situation is improving,\u201d said Chikumbe, who asked for more time to provide necessary statistics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cases of maternal mortality could reach worrying levels if the vacancy rate in Malawi\u2019s health sector remains high. Research shows that Malawi\u2019s health sector has a 60 percent deficit of nursing and midwifery staff, which is one of the highest on the globe. Malawi has 8,626 positions for nurse midwife technicians but only 3,475 are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":23018,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44098","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\/44098","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=44098"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44101,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44098\/revisions\/44101"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}