Rural families pay dearly for specialist care

Families in rural Malawi are paying a heavy price to access specialist medical care, with some patients forced to travel hundreds of kilometres because essential services remain concentrated in major referral hospitals.

The burden came into focus in Parliament after it emerged that transporting a patient from Nsanje District Hospital to Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in Blantyre can cost about K450,000 in fuel alone, raising fresh concerns over the lack of regular specialist outreach services to district hospitals.

Raising a supplementary policy question in Parliament on Monday, Nsanje Central legislator Francis Kasaila said government had previously resolved that specialist doctors would be provided with transport to conduct scheduled outreach visits to district hospitals so that rural communities could access specialised medical services closer to home.

Kasaila said the policy has yet to translate into regular specialist outreach, leaving patients with no option but to travel to central hospitals for treatment.

“Last week… the people of Nsanje Central also complained that it is becoming extremely expensive to bring people from Nsanje to Queen’s because one trip is costing about K450,000. But if these doctors were able to visit, they would be able to take care of many, many people that need their services,” Kasaila told the House.

Responding to the concern, Minister of Health and Sanitation Madalitso Baloyi acknowledged that Malawi has too few specialist doctors, saying the shortage remains the biggest obstacle to expanding specialist services to district hospitals.

Baloyi said her ministry is assessing the number of specialists required in different medical fields and plans to recruit more while working with development partners to train additional specialists.

She said organisations such as SEED Global Health, the Government of Morocco and other partners are supporting the country’s efforts to increase the specialist workforce.

The minister assured Parliament that government intends to deploy specialist doctors to district and community hospitals as numbers improve, expressing confidence that the concerns raised by Kasaila would be addressed in the near future.