As people in the orange camp are busy celebrating
the appreciation of the Malawi Kwacha signaling achievements of the current
administration there is a time bomb ticking in the health sector that needs
urgent attention. This reporter has established that Government has no money to
send newly qualified Medical Doctors for a six month Health Management Orientation
Course at Mpemba as a requirement to register with Medical Council of Malawi.
According to some sources at College of Medicine
and Ministry of Health, this means that all Doctors who graduated from College
of Medicine in 2012 and half of those that graduated in 2011 are not allowed to
practice in the country because they are not registered with Medical Council of
Malawi as required by law.
In-order to practice medicine the
process is that, when students graduate with a Bachelor of
Medicine or Bachelor of Surgery from College of Medicine they are required by
Medical Council of Malawi to do an 18 months internship. Part of it they spend
at Queens and Kamuzu Central Hospital. After that, there is another six months
which they spend at Mpemba and another 6 months at any district hospital where
they learn district health Management.
This period at Mpemba and the one at the district
hospital is supported by the Ministry of Health. Meanwhile it has been
established that the Ministry has no money to support this, therefore all the
newly qualified Intern Doctors cannot be registered with Medical Council to be
legally accepted to practice Medicine in country.
This is a life threatening situation as the
health sector is already burdened with a critical shortage of drugs as
government is still struggling to address this problem where they have only
managed to reduce the drug stock-outs from 95 percent to about 80 percent. The
sector is also loaded with shortage of qualified health personnel and this situation
continues to put the lives of many ordinary people in danger.
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