Malawi’s 3 year-old boy drowns in pit latrine, dead
A 3 year-old-boy from Semani Village, Traditional Authority Mkaya in Blantyre recently drowned in a pit latrine as he went to answer to the call of nature.
According to a recorded police statement from Patrick Paul, father to the deceased Precious, his wife had been watching over the boy before the incident.
“Precious had told his mother that he wanted to go and answer to the call of nature in the toilet and the mother allowed him to go alone. After sometime, his mother went to check him probably to clean him up only to discover that he had fallen into the pit latrine through a hole that had just dev
eloped due to the wetness of the soil,” said the father in the statement, adding that the toilet had become full of water due to heavy rains.
Confirming the incident, Blantyre Police Assistant Public Relations Officer, Sergeant Lameck Thembachako said the deceased was later removed from the toilet by the police and members of the community after the matter was reported to police.
Thembachako said the boy was then taken to Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (QECH) where doctors certified him dead.
According to police the body is still lying in state at the Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital mortuary pending examination and post-mortem to establish the cause of his death.
The deceased’s parents live at Suya Village in Traditional Authority Machinjiri in Blantyre.
In Malawi, many people use conventional pit latrines which are simply holes in the ground where human waste is left.
A 22 year old mother in Manase, Blantyre on Thursday last week, shocked the residents after she decided to dump her newly born baby in a pit latrine.
