Technology promoting health in Balaka

NCA is partnering with DREAM project in Balaka, which is in the south-eastern part of Malawi.  This week we had our friends Toril and Helge visiting us, and this gave a good opportunity to pay the DREAM project a visit.  DREAM ( Disease Relief through Excellent and Advanced Means)
is a project of Sant Egidio Community, a lay Catholic community well established in Malawi.

The DREAM project is promoting technology to improve quality of health services.  Data management is extremely important in order to effectively register clients and follow them up systematically.  The photo below shows how DREAM in Balaka keeps record of around 20,000 clients in the district, of which around 5,000 are HIV/AIDS positive.

All pregnant women in the districts are supposed to be registered and follow a regular schedule of check-up.  If they do not turn up, field assistants will reach out to them and encourage them to come for check-up.  We were told that during the last month, only one pregnant woman had failed to follow the regime. The woman in the photo below was one of the many who had followed the regime both before and after giving birth.

HIV testing is a key component of the work, and a well functional laboratory is part of the Balaka health centre.  A number of different tests could be carried out through the skilled work of professional technicians.  Their capacity for testing for HIV is around 200 per day, while lack of additional technical staff prevents the laboratory from carrying out another 100 tests.  We were quite impressed by the physical environment, the instruments and the professional regime that obviously kept a very high quality.  It was humbling and gratifying to know that NCA is able to support this quality service in an otherwise poor country context.

One of the components of DREAM's work in Balaka district, which include far distance places, is the satellite field clinics in which mobile health teams visit weekly.  Through installation of solar power, the basic technology needed for the operations can be carried out also in these clinics.  We visited one of these clinics and heard the witness of its importance for the local community.

Clean water is fundamental to health, and the hand-pump at the health centre was serving the centre and the surrounding community.


Having experienced this important work on the ground, it is painful to admit that we in NCA may perhaps have to end the support for this work at the end of this month.  We have been informed that financial support for our health programme through the Norwegian Embassy has been stopped as of 2016.  Increased allocations to respond to the Syrian humanitarian disaster and the refugee crisis in Europe have led to reduced budget for Malawi development assistance. This, combined with political decisions to change thematic priorities for official Norwegian assistance to Malawi have been given as the main reasons. Our Embassy supported health programme has been on-going since we entered Malawi in 2002, and has had multi-million budgets in Norwegian kroner.  While we are exploring to fill part of the gap from alternative sources, we have to go through painful cuts to our partner projects.

No decision has been made about the support to DREAM, but the future is uncertain.  This is a great pity since DREAM very much relies on NCA support for this work.  Quality service is crucial to keep the level of HIV infected people down.  The systematic DREAM efforts have contributed to a stabilization, and even a decrease in HIV infected persons in Balaka district.  What will happen if this activity has to be scaled down!?  Challenges are certainly ahead!