Malawi

UNICEF has an interesting story about some of the work they’re doing in collaboration with Columbia University to aid nutrition surveillance with the assistance of RapidSMS. You can read the full story here.

David Banda is a health extension worker who—thanks to the project—now uses his mobile phone to record and transmit nutrition information on the 70 or more under-five children he monitors every month.

“I have no other means of sending the information,” he said. “We have no fax machine in this remote village.”

Before the RapidSMS system was introduced, Banda used to cycle 19 miles every month to deliver the completed surveillance questionnaires to the district health office, and he would receive no feedback. In his 20-year career, he never imagined the day would come when data transmission would be done at the click of a button.

When his health center was chosen to be part of the RapidSMS pilot, Banda and his fellow surveillance assistants were trained on-site for about three hours on how to register and send the information. A poster and sheet-card containing instructions was also provided for quick reference.

The Living Proof Project just posted this excellent photo gallery on “Kangaroo Care” in Malawi. You may remember the corresponding video we posted a while back on the same subject. Remember to check out the Living Proof Project for more evidence of how US investments in global health are saving lives around the world.

Click the image below for the full gallery:

Yesterday’s New York Times featured a front-page article on needed alternatives to orphanage institutions in Malawi. Worth a read.

Excerpts below, full piece here

Researchers now say a far better way to assist these bereft children is with simple allocations of cash — $4 to $20 a month in an experimental program under way here in Malawi — given directly to the destitute extended families who take them in. That program could provide grants to eight families looking after some two dozen children for the $1,500 a year it costs to sponsor one child at the Home of Hope, estimated Candace M. Miller, a Boston University professor and a lead researcher in the project.

Experts and child advocates maintain that orphanages are expensive and often harm children’s development by separating them from their families. Most of the children living in institutions around the world have a surviving parent or close relative, and they most commonly entered orphanages because of poverty, according to new reports by Unicef and Save the Children.

“Because there’s money in orphanages, people are creating them and getting children in them,” said Dr. Biziwick Mwale, executive director of Malawi’s National AIDS Commission.

Malawi’s cash transfer experiment, financed by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and supported by Unicef, directly helps destitute families who care for many children or have no able-bodied adult to earn a living. Children whose families got the grants were healthier, better fed and clothed and more likely to be in school than children in families that got none, according to a randomized community trial conducted by Boston University and the University of Malawi and paid for by Unicef and the United States government.

Professor Miller said the program had yielded “fabulous benefits” but cautioned that the country needed better safeguards to prevent corruption and fraud in the future.

Here at ONE Headquarters, it’s easy to feel removed from the individuals and communities that we advocate for around the world. That’s why it was particularly exciting to meet four visitors from Malawi who came to speak with us recently about the challenges newborns face in their country: Grace Tutiwe Ngoto and her daughter Tuntufye, nurse and midwife Hilalpi Kunkeyani and Reuben Ligowe, Program Officer for Save the Children in Malawi’s Newborn Health program.

Malawi, a nation of 12 million people, is situated on the eastern side of Africa surrounded by Tanzania, Mozambique and Zambia. Their poverty statistics are hard to imagine. The per capita gross national income is about $170 and the amount of government spending on health per capita is $5!

In Malawi, 73,200 children under age five die every year. Twenty percent of these are newborns less than one month that succumb to infection, complications at birth or challenges associated with low birth rates. Impressively, Malawi has managed to reduce their under-5 mortality rate by 30% over the last five years with limited resources. Unfortunately, death rates among newborns have declined at a slower pace.

This being said, while low birth rate used to be considered a death sentence, organizations like Save the Children have had great success with interventions such as kangaroo mother care (KMC). KMC encourages mothers to maintain “skin-to-skin” contact with their low-weight newborns, much like a kangaroo mother keeps her baby in her pouch. This way, any change in the baby’s body temperature is immediately corrected by the mother’s warmth and the baby is exclusively breastfed. (more…)

Yesterday, within the robust walls of the US Capitol, four important players in the game of private-sector organizations met to discuss the importance of public-private partnerships, as well as US federal funding, to combat HIV/AIDS in Africa. Olutosin Akinyode and I attended the forum.

Lisa Bohmer (Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation), Maurice Middleberg (Global Health Council), Jeff Richardson (Abbott Fund) and Jane Kambalame (Embassy of the Republic of Malawi) held a hearing illustrating the necessity of PEPFAR as vital to the effectiveness of each organization.

Many of these groups are funded and supported by PEPFAR and are examples of what the bill has done and can do in the future – increased support will allow them to reach more men, women and children with HIV/AIDS. The reauthorize PEPFAR bill will double the number of people on retroviral treatment to 3 million, including over 450,000 children.

All the information you need to make your call is here. (more…)

ONE member and Development Director for New Morning School Kelly Krawczyk helped to partner New Morning School in Plymouth, MI, and Chichiri Primary School in Blantyre, Malawi to educate students about life, culture and history in another country.

I visited New Morning School as they kicked off their Africa project to discuss some of the struggles that children in Africa can face because of the lack of water, lack of education and the devastating effects of malaria. I gave ONE gear to several young activists that have already raised funds for their partner school by doing lawn work, selling handmade products and holding garage sales.

Learning and taking action — that’s what it’s all about!

-Katie Andrews, ONE Regional Organizer