MHEN says blackouts affecting Malawi health delivery
Malawi Health Equity Network (MHEN) has urged the government to speed up with alternative source of energy in order to avoid loss of lives in country’s hospitals with the continued blackouts which are affecting health services in the country.
MEHN Executive Director, George Jobe said electricity is very important in running the daily hospital activities.
“Our observation as a health watchdog is that Malawi is secretly losing lives especially in operation rooms, theatres needs power throughout,” he said.
Jobe appealed to government to complete Kammwamba project with speed in order to help hospitals which are undergoing difficult time especially during at theatre department.
“Imagine someone is undergoing operation at the theatre or is on the life support machine and power goes off, it means those people will die because not every hospital has a standby generator.” said Jobe.
Jobe said that is why as a network they have been calling for adequate budgetary support to Ministry of health in line with Abujah Declaration of 15 Percent.
Currently, Malawi is on 10 Percent which is not enough, according to Jobe.
“Laundry and Kitchen services also depend on electricity, so we are appealing to government to end these blackouts quickly, we are also appealing to hospitals to at least own standby generator with automatic switch, ” said Jobe.
MHEN is an independent alliance of organizations and individuals promoting equity and quality in health for all people in Malawi. The current membership is about 50 organizations, associations, coalitions, training institutions andhealth professionals.
It works to improve the distribution, quality and access to health services throughout Malawi by influencing government policy and practice, as well as activities of donors and civil society through advocacy, networking, research, information dissemination and budget monitoring.
MHEN also advocate and lobby for the health policies and systems that promote the delivery of equitable and quality health care services by influencing policy and practice through research, monitoring and evaluation.
Since its inception, MHEN has been advocating for increased national and district budgetary allocation to the health sector in line with regional and international obligations such as those relating to the African Union (Abuja Declaration, Africa Health Strategy and Maputo Plan of Action), the United Nations (Millennium Development Goals) and national over-arching policies such as the Malawi Growth and Development Strategy II (MGDS II) and the National Health Sector Strategic Plan (HSSP).
In 2016/17 financial year, total government expenditure is estimated at MK 1,136,961 billion(MK1.1Trillion), which is a nominal increase of about 22% from the 2015/16 approved budget of MK930 billion.
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