The Dalitso Project
April 2018
4/9/2018
First of all I would like to thank everyone who attended our AGM last month. It is such a privilege to have so many committed supporters who would come on a cold Friday evening to hear about all of the exciting things that the Dalitso project are doing in Malawi! For those of you who were unable to make it- not only did you miss out on some awesome cheese, biscuits and cheesecakes, I’m afraid you missed out on some photos and stories! But I will try to make it up to you! So I (Becky) returned from 2 weeks in Malawi at the end of February – just in time for the beast from the east! Now, my primary role was to visit and assess the new Dochas Medical centre. Like all healthcare ventures the Dochas Medical Centre is a huge financial undertaking and so it was felt that with my knowledge of our cash strapped NHS, I might be able to advise/ identify ways to make our centre more efficient! I also wanted to ensure that we were meeting the highest possible standards of medical care within the Dochas Medical Centre. Fortunately and unfortunately at the same time I was very pleasantly surprised by the quality of care and cleanliness demonstrated by all of our staff including the non – qualified staff at Dochas. I was also surprised and pleased by the efficiency of the system that was in place and the focus on public health which I believe to be foundational in any sustainable healthcare setup. Whilst this was great news in terms of the quality of service that we are providing and also in terms of the magnitude of my job out there (whilst on my annual leave from the NHS), it did mean that cost cuts were not the simple solutions I had anticipated. However, as I began to look at the cost of many of the treatments we were offering I could see that most of the treatments were actually incredibly cheap and that many patients were managing to pay for their treatment or at least contribute significantly. (I should explain that at Dochas Medical centre, the staff are all funded by the Dalitso Project, which makes treatment already more affordable. In Malawi, many medications are also sold at significantly reduced rates – reduced through funding of many international charities. So although we do ask patients to pay something towards their treatment (as we believe in empowering people and not just creating a ‘hand-out-culture’), patients are paying for medications at prices which are well below a standard price even in Malawi. Furthermore, all of our own children are all treated for free, and if any villager cannot afford to pay for their medical treatment, they will be given treatment for the price that they can afford to pay). However, the only treatment where patients’ were failing to even pay close to what they owed the clinic, was Malaria. Now Malaria remains one the biggest killers in Malawi and is attributed to 9,484 deaths per year in Malawi (WHO 2014) with an older study suggesting that 40% of the deaths of children under 2 in Malawi are attributed to Malaria. So it is unsurprising therefore that the biggest drain on our resources at the Dochas Medical centre is the treatment and management of Malaria. I have an edit to make from February’s update where I stated that the cost of severe malaria treatment was £12. In actual fact on reviewing my notes, standard malaria costs approximately £12 but severe malaria costs about £25 to treat. Apologies for the error and subsequent confusion. As mentioned in previous updates, our container had a troublesome journey to Malawi this year, and ended up stranded in Durban port when a storm wreaked so much havoc that the port had to be rebuilt before our container could continue its journey. Unfortunately this delayed the arrival of the container until the end of January, but did mean that the kids got to celebrate Christmas twice! It also meant that I was able to observe the unloading and sharing of all the many things that you had all generously donated last year! As well as the many medical supplies that we were able to kit our clinic out with, we were able to send many items to the government hospitals as well as the charitable orthopaedic hospital CURE. We were also able to provide almost all of our staff with a bicycle which means that their commutes to market and to the fields will now be much easier. But my favourite part of the container was seeing all the children getting a new outfit of clothes! It was lovely to see the children getting new clothes and shoes and showing all their friends their new outfits! One of the older boys chose an Arbroath High School prefect blazer as part of his outfit. When I explained to Bonface Moses that this was a prefect blazer from my old high school, he was delighted and started getting the younger children to call him ‘Mr Prefect’! The multitude of clothes was soon distributed amongst our nearly 300 orphans and some needy local villagers. And I was privileged to see this in action when one day up in Kambilonjo we came across a young mother who was out tending to her fields. Now we could see that her maize was failing and had barely germinated, and certainly didn’t have ears of corn like our own healthy maize. When we called over to her, we could see that she was applying fertiliser. Now February was really too late to be applying fertiliser as it is supposed to be applied at planting time in November. When we asked her about this she explained that her husband had sold the fertiliser that the chief had given him and so she had spent the past 3 months trying to make enough money to buy some fertiliser for her crops. Unfortunately, though she had succeeded in buying fertiliser, since she had only reached the equivalent of primary 2 in school, she did not realise that the fertiliser was now next to useless and that despite applying fertiliser, she was now unlikely to harvest any food from that field. This poor, uneducated woman was working so hard in the midday heat, with a baby tied to her back and two young toddlers at her ankles, and yet her hard graft was unlikely to reap her any rewards. My heart broke for the lady and we decided to do everything we could for this wee family. We were able to bring the two children into our daycare feeding and education program and provide the whole family with clothes, provided so generously by yourselves, our supporters- so thank you very much! In fact once they were changed into their new clothes and shoes, I actually had to do a double take to realise that I was greeting the same kids! In other news, the Mary Spink Skills Centre is almost operational and now has a roof. We are so excited about this new venture and can’t wait to see it opened and functional. Hopefully it will provide lots of employment for our children and the local community in the months to come. For now though, now that the roof is on, we have stalled progress pending some more fundraising! So be encouraged that all your fundraising really does make a difference! In Thyolo, progress has been being made with the Ulemu project. This is the project that we set up in January to help our girls with sanitary products. The girls have been busy making reusable sanitary towels which are both cost effective and much better for the environment. In fact they have even begun selling them in and around the local villages near both Thyolo and Kambilonjo. With one of our student nurses even taking a bunch out with her on her clinical placement to sell- she has none left! Thank-you to everyone who donated pants and soap, please keep them coming as we continue to support this venture to get off the ground. We hope that as well as providing much needed sanitary products, this may also be a good business venture that will provide employment to some of our young girls. The wedding dress business has also made a good start with some bookings being made for this coming years wedding dress season. Our very first wedding is next month and hopefully we will have some photos to show you of this new venture! This too is an ongoing project so if you know of anyone who would like their wedding dress to help create employment and income for some of our youngsters, please do point them in our direction! Thanks also to everyone who donated wedding dresses! There will be many women looking beautiful in your dresses! We are hoping that this too will be a really worthwhile and profitable business for some of our young girls to work with! The wedding dress and ulemu project is still operating from our orphan daycare centre as there has been a delay with the completion of the shop that we are to rent. However, we have been assured that the shop will be ready in early May, so hopefully we might have a shop by July! Kiri at Thyolo continues to come up with more and more ideas for this small shop so by the time it is completed we may need a bigger store! The latest idea is about training one of our young boys in shoe making. So watch this space! We may be selling shoes from the shop in years to come! Well I apologise for the length of this update, but hopefully you don’t feel cheated now if you missed the AGM! Many thanks again to you all for all the support that you give- you really are making a great difference! With love and blessings Becky x
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