A letter from Martha Sommers in Malawi
July 3, 2011
Dear Friends and Family,
Nurse Munthali re-checks blood of child who have recovered from severe malaria.
Greetings from Malawi! It is winter, which means windy, dry days, and cool nights for Ekwendeni. The subsistent farmers have harvested their maize, and mice are being collected and sold on kebab sticks along the road between Ekwendeni and Lilongwe. Trucks over-packed with tobacco, the main cash crop even though the prices are low, barely stay on the roads as they move toward the auction floors. And winter is the slow season for the hospital. The children’s ward season, with too much pneumonia and malaria, has ended, and maternity season has not yet begun. Next weekend I am hosting an “end of season” party at my house to celebrate our success and survival through this year's children’s ward season. The nurses on the children’s ward have already rehearsed dancing, discussed who is cooking what, and whose speakers will be brought to play the music. The party is for the children’s ward staff, all who work with children, and all who are happy that the children’s ward season is over. So we may have lots of people celebrating. We have done well this year. After the party, we can pause and then work to improve things before next season. Not that the children’s ward is closed, of course. But we are down to maybe 20 inpatients and about 5 admissions a day to the ward.
From January through June the children’s ward had 1,950 admissions and 9 deaths. In June we had 302 admissions and no deaths. The most common diagnoses were severe malaria and severe pneumonia. The most common factor related to the deaths was the out-stocking of essential life-saving medicines. Ekwendeni Hospital had the lowest in the hospital death rate in the northern region, and the highest rate of taking vital signs on admission. We mourn each death, and at the same time we are happy that our death rate is less than 1 percent. I remember the children’s ward having deaths daily when I first came to Malawi and being happy when Ekwendeni Hospital’s children’s ward death rate reached below 5 percent in 2002. Training on emergency triage and treatment of children, having more trained nurses, focusing on following protocols for common severe acute illnesses, and having essential life-saving equipment and medicines, as well as hard work and commitment, are the main factors for our progress. Thank you for supporting these efforts.
Ekwendeni has long been the main training site for the Synod’s College of Health Sciences nursing program. It is now also one of four training sites for the country’s College of Medicine’s new required fourth-year family medicine rotation. We have five to eight students for one month for three months of the year for their only hospital experience away from Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Blantyre, which is a large referral hospital. Of the students we have so far hosted, some are coming to their home region and some have never been so far away from a city or this far north. Many, not familiar with the Chitonga and Chitumbuka languages, have had to learn to use interpreters. Feedback comments include: the staff was very welcoming and did not look down on us because we were students. We became more confident and learned how to ask personal questions. We developed skills in how to work under pressure and not take any shortcuts. The counseling sessions taught us how to deal with the psychosocial aspects. We learned a lot!
The College of Medicine is looking for funding for this rotation next year. Thank you to so many of you who have contributed financially this year so that Ekwendeni could participate. I love my role as training site coordinator, including the one-on-one teaching of the students at this critical stage and being part of the process of developing doctors who will hopefully be willing and able to work throughout Malawi.
Yours in Christ,
Martha
The 2011 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 67
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