General Alliance Insurance Company donates K52m patient rehabilitation wing to Malawi Against Physical Disabilities
General Alliance Insurance Company has donated a 10-room modern block and beds to Malawi Physical Disabilities (MAP)’s Kachere Rehabilitation Centre in Blantyre.
The donation is valued at K52 million. All the rooms in the facility are self-contained and this will be a paid ward so that the money realised should cater for other services.
The company’s Managing Director, Modecai Msiska, SC, said they were saddened to note that despite the best efforts of those in the medical sector, the facilities are always inadequate to enable them discharge their duties or provide quality health services to their clients.
Msiska emphasized the need to develop a culture where things designated for a particular use should be committed to that use and maintained in a clean state because emergencies arise anytime.
“They must be kept in pristine condition, disinfected, and repaired when something goes wrong. You can’t be calling for donations every time,” he said.
The Minister of Health and Population, Khumbize Kandodo Chiponda, who commissioned the facility, said rehabilitation of physical disabilities is one of the areas where her ministry needs a lot of support.
Chiponda said Kachere is one such an institution that needs support to enable it provide quality service to the patients.
“We get patients from all over the 28 districts of Malawi. We need these services, at least one centre in each of the regions, we have a huge waiting list who need these services and do not know where to go,” she said.
MAP Board Chairperson Tom Mwamadi said the donation was initiated in 2018 after seeing the dire shortage of beds for rehabilitation of patients.
He said at the time, the wards were full and patients were being turned away because there was simply not enough space.
“Not if this facility is considered in any way modest or inadequate, which is a matter of opinion, it was undertaken at a time when many companies were downsizing, declaring redundancies, not increasing salaries and cutting non-essential expenditure etc. General Alliance not only funded this project, they also did not make any cuts in their workforce. Indeed, they increased staff salaries in 2021.
“What had not been anticipated was the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic and the crisis it wrought upon the world. Malawi, like the rest of the world, was in the middle of the Covid-19 crisis. Businesses were struggling and most companies in Malawi and around the world cut down on all non- essential expenditure. There was genuine concern that the project would have to be postponed,” he said.
MAP treats patients who have suffered stroke, road traffic and industrial accident-related injuries, arthritis, amputations from diabetes, disabilities from HIV and other related infectious diseases such as meningitis, Tuberculosis of the spine, and other neurological conditions.
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