No help for kidney patients at Queens Hospital
Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (QECH) in Malawi’s commercial capital of Blantyre, the biggest referral hospital in the Southern Region, is operating without dialysis machines – forcing kidney patients to scramble for healthcare at the Kamuzu Central Hospital (KCH) in Lilongwe, Nyasa Times has learnt.
Ministry of Health spokesperson Henry Chimbali said the hospital will have to wait until next month [February] when the Ministry gets new machines from South Africa.
Chimbali could not clearly provide quick solution for the problem – a development which some patients have described as disheartening.

“We’ve to travel every two weeks to Lilongwe to get medical assistance which is very expensive,” said a patient who refused to be named.A source at KCH confided in Nyasa Times that there are only ten machines working at the referral hospital and that “there is enormous pressure.”