Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Programme’s Public Patient Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) members under the Maternal and Fetal Health Research Group on Wednesday 26 July 2023 cheered up female Cyclone Freddy survivors at Champhanda Camp in Chikwawa.
During the visit, the MLW’s Maternal Health PPIE team distributed birth packs which among others contained solar-powered lamps, soap, and porridge to expectant women and lactating mothers.
According to MLW’s Maternal and Fetal Health Research Group Project Manager Bertha Maseko, the decision to visit women at Champhanda Camp was informed by experiences drawn from a similar interaction that the team had with Blantyre-based Cyclone Freddy expectant survivors a few months earlier.
Maseko said: “Following Cyclone Freddy that affected different places in the southern region including Blantyre, we made an arrangement through which we ferried expectant women from their Camps to Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (QECH) to access maternal and postanal care which was hard to get following the disaster.”
“Interacting with these women in Blantyre we learned that expectant women were hugely affected by the cyclone and deserved special assistance to safeguard their lives and unborn babies hence the decision to visit this place to extend our aid to equally affected women.”
During the interaction, the female Cyclone Freddy survivors at Champhanda Camp disclosed that social services such as schools, markets and hospitals are hard to reach due to poor road networks and lengthy distances.
One of the Cyclone Freddy survivors Mirriam Benson said the disaster affected the social business from all angles.
She said, for instance, it is hard for children from the camp to access education as mostly they end up missing classes due to lengthy distances.
Benson thanked MLW for extending the aid saying such assistance will go a long way in easing the social-economic pressure that is currently savaging their lives.
Chief Champhanda commended MLW for reaching out to his struggling subordinates who he said are in dire need of material and physiological support.
