From kidney failure to crusader: Maliro launches Foundation to save lives

A Malawian man who discovered, in the most terrifying way possible, that he’d been born with only one kidney has turned his brush with death into a mission to protect thousands of others from suffering the same fate.

Emmanuel Maliro only found out about his rare condition after collapsing into kidney failure in 2023 — a diagnosis that plunged him headfirst into Malawi’s brutal, under-resourced dialysis system.

Now, he’s channelling that ordeal into a brand-new charity, the Mphukira Foundation, aimed at getting Malawians talking about kidney health before it’s too late.

“Kidney care in Malawi is a crisis. Dialysis requires three sessions per week, public hospitals are full and private hospitals are too expensive for most people. We want Malawians to know where their kidneys are, what they do, and how to protect them,” said Maliro.

He said the foundation will team up with health workers and medical experts to run sensitisation campaigns across the country, with the ultimate goal of getting ordinary Malawians thinking seriously about their kidney health long before disaster strikes.

Maliro revealed the foundation will be run alongside his wife, Dr Susan Brown, a clinician based in the United States.

Background

Maliro’s foundation lands at a moment when Malawi’s kidney care system is buckling under pressure.

The country of roughly 22 million people has, for years, relied on just two public hospitals — Kamuzu Central Hospital (KCH) in Lilongwe and Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (QECH) in Blantyre — to provide dialysis for patients battling chronic kidney disease, leaving the entire three-million-strong Northern Region without a single dialysis machine.

The strain has proved devastating. Patients from the north and outlying districts routinely face crippling travel costs just to access treatment, with some sleeping on hospital verandas between sessions and others missing appointments entirely because they simply can’t afford the trip.

Breakdowns at government facilities have repeatedly forced desperate hospitals to bus patients between cities, with those unable to afford private alternatives, which can cost tens of thousands of kwacha per session, left dangerously exposed.

Health advocacy groups, including the Malawi Health Equity Network and Kidney Foundation Malawi, have separately sounded the alarm over the disease’s growing toll, warning that kidney disease often strikes as a “silent killer,” with many patients only discovering they’re ill once the condition has already reached a critical stage.

Authorities have pledged to expand services, with a new dialysis centre backed by a K3 billion government allocation set to open at Mzuzu Central Hospital, aimed at finally easing the burden on patients in the north.

For Maliro, though, the fight starts long before anyone ever needs a dialysis machine — with simply getting Malawians to understand the organs they’re often born with just one of, and don’t fully appreciate until it’s almost too late.