I just read an article yesterday about the lack of staffing impeding the quality of service offered to HIV/AIDS clients. According to MSF (Medecins Sans Frontiers/"Doctors Without Borders"), South Africa's MSF has 74 doctors doctors and 393 nurses per 100,000 clients. As if that's not bad enough, Malawi's HIV/AIDS epidemic is a lot less contained than that in South Africa at its insane rate of 14% HIV positives with only 2 doctors and 56 nurses per 100,000 clients.
My health center is one of the handful of health centers that MSF has invested heavily in, so I'm priviliged to see all the goods that MSF is doing. But it can hurt your head just watching the nurses and doctors rushing about (actually, I think the doctor only comes to my site every once in awhile) and the clients waiting long hours.
Health care in general in Malawi is just bad. In my district, there are only 5 doctors, all of whom serve at the district hospital, so most villagers do not have access to the doctors. Though the health centers target the villagers specifically, the quality of health care may not be adequate enough due to inadequate staffing and inadequate supplies. In addition to lack of electricity (well, in my case, we have electricity but lots of black-outs), we cannot properly store the immunizations and medications. As for sanitation, most staff don't use gloves and have to hand-wash the bedding and sheets that women have given birth on. They dispose of syringes and other "hazardous" materials by burning them behind the health center (or in other cases, at the incinerator). Since we don't have a doctor, the in-charge of my health center is actually a medical assistant - just one notch up from nurses with just 2 years of medical education. Then, there are the 2 nurses. Well, I could go on and on, but I have to say it's pretty disappointing to see how bad healthcare is especially in comparison to America's. But I know that most people just do with what they can.
