Drug Shortages in Malawi Continue

Two months ago, the government of Malawi assured citizens that drug availability in hospitals was becoming normalized. This assurance however, was false hope. Studies are revealing that only 15 percent of essential drugs have been produced. In May, Catherine Gotani Hara, the country’s Minister of Health addressed reporters saying that the drug shortage was normalizing following the delivery of 80 percent of medicine and pharmaceuticals produced by the Central Medical Stores Trust (CMST). However, recent information from the CMST indicates that the company has only managed to produce 15 percent of the essential drugs. (Nyasa Times)

Six months prior, CMST released information stating Malawi was running dangerously low on essential drug and medical supplies with a 95 percent stock-out. The stock-out is now currently around 80 percent and the country awaits drugs that are being shipped in from countries such as Mozambique. When asked why the drugs were taking so long to arrive, CMST Executive Director Fred Mzoma blamed the delay on logistical hiccups in the shipment process. (Nyasa Times)

The serious essential drug shortage is affecting hospitals throughout the country. Doctors at Kamuzu Central Hospital (KCH) in Lilongwe sent a letter to President Joyce Banda asking her to help stop public hospitals from becoming "waiting rooms for death". At KCH, along with many other public hospitals, patients are being turned away and told to find treatment at private health facilities. The Health Ministries Principal Secretary, Charles Mwansambo, blamed the shortage on drug theft from warehouses by medical workers. However the Ministry is now assuring that there will be no more cases of drug theft because all remaining loopholes have been sealed.

In related news, President Joyce Banda has said her administration is making a point that health facilities with adequate standards will be available to all in Malawi at reasonable distances. Banda recognizes that the measure of a country’s development is based on the health of the people. President Banda spoke at a development rally after laying the foundation stone for the construction of Luvwere Health Center in Mzimbia West constituency. She said a country can’t develop without proper health facilities. (Nyasa Times)

Banda included in her speech that health facilities not only had to be close by, but also equipped with adequate resources. The Luvwere Health Center is among the first Health Centers of its kind being built under the standards and supervision of President Banda. This new health facility will address problems currently facing people in surrounding areas.

During her administration alone, President Banda plans to make sure at least 15 new health centers are constructed throughout the country.

Alum Alex Carstensen uses Chichewa to study linguistics

We love to feature blog posts that highlight former volunteers' ongoing work in development and Malawi.

Alex Carstensen, a 2009 volunteer, is studying psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, with a focus on linguistics and cognition. Much of her research has included Chichewa speakers and the structure of the Chewa language, so we thought it would be great to share more with you about what she's up to! Some of the material is a little complex - but we've tried to break it down for the layperson (WC staff included!). It's really intriguing if you have even a bit of interest in the relationship between language and thought.

In a nutshell, Alex is looking into whether language shapes the way we think about space. Different languages vary in the amount of detail involved in spacial descriptions. Some languages are closer to
each other in this area while others are quite different. Do these words people use to explain space (say,
"over" or "on") shape the way we perceive the world? To some extent, yes, but Alex's research suggests that speakers of different languages may still think similarly, even when they talk about the world in different ways.

Alex sent World Camp the following abstract of some research she will be presenting this summer:

"Languages partition the world in different ways — for example, the categories named by spatial terms
vary substantially across languages. Yet beneath this linguistic variation there may lie universal
cognitive tendencies. Khetarpal et al. (2010) found that speakers of Dutch and English, despite
differences in their linguistic spatial systems, sorted spatial scenes similarly — and more like
the finer-grained language, Dutch. We asked whether this preference for fine-grained sorting extends
to two new languages: Máíhɨki, a language of Peruvian Amazonia, with a fine-grained spatial system,
and Chichewa, a Bantu language of southeast Africa, with a coarse-grained spatial system. Despite the
great range in spatial naming represented across these languages — both in the granularity and the shape
of their spatial categories — we found that speakers of all four languages sorted finely, and thus
similarly to the finer-grained languages, Máíhɨki and Dutch. These results suggest that spatial

cognition, unlike spatial language, is universally fine-grained."

Let's unpack that a bit!

Languages use different prepositions to explain the location of something. Perhaps in English we say
"around the neck" and "in a fishbowl" while a Chichewa speaker uses the same word for both locations.
In this case, English is the more "fine-grained" language because it's describes differences in location
more thoroughly.

When subjects were asked to group objects without using words, they grouped them in ways that were closer to the classifications of the finer-grained languages in the study. In fact, their non-verbal
classifications were even more fine-grained than any of the languages. This was true of subjects across languages.

This observation has led Alex and some of her fellow researchers toward the hypothesis that people think
about space with similar "granularity" regardless of the detail conveyed in their language.

Isn't that cool? And don't you feel a little bit smarter for working through those ideas? I think we
often wonder if people see the world in the same way that we do. This is some evidence that we might all be seeing the world in a similar way - at least spatially!

Baker's Back! World Camp is Planning a Medical Mission Trip for 2014

It has been almost two years since I last saw Malawi. Having been accustomed to visiting "the warm heart of Africa" two to three times a year prior to starting my surgical residency, it was quite shocking to see how many changes have occurred in this small - land locked country. The streets are busy with tiny  import vehicles, such as a Japanese version of a Ford Fiesta, only  in this case filled with 6-8 Africans. Several large new buildings have arisen, most with empty stores. I was discouraged to find that over the past several months the kwacha (Malawian currency) has lost what little value it had two years ago. However, just as usual, the people are as friendly and optimistic as I remember in spite of the discouraging state of their nation; this is a country that continues to live up to its nickname.

This trip to Malawi is a short but important one for me. During the summer of 2014, we plan on running what will be the first of hopefully many medical/surgical missions with US based doctors, nurses and other volunteers here in Malawi. According to the medical council of Malawi (I myself have counted,) there are 37 practicing surgeons total, either foreign or domestic, in Malawi; consider this number in the context of a population of 16 million! One of my goals on this visit is to establish a new project for World Camp. I have just visited several rural hospitals with semi-functioning operating rooms that have no surgeon...or any physician for that matter! The fact is that everyday, an untold number of Malawians needlessly die because they do not have access to the most basic medical care. Wouldn't it be exciting if we could fill a small part of this void?  

Please follow our journey, support our cause, volunteer, and help Malawians get the medical care they need and deserve. I believe that if the first World  can consider access to healthcare a basic right, so should the citizens of Malawi. I thank you in advance for your support.