Sunday, April 24, 2011

Malamulo Mission Hospital


This is an old Seventh-day Adventist Mission, one of the first in Africa I think. Very well laid out, set in the countryside of southern Malawi and surrounded by tea plantations. But with the shift of the population into cities there are fewer paying clients in the countryside and fewer still making the relatively long drive (1+ hour from Blantyre) to receive health care out here.  And so Malamulo continues to provide high quality care to the thousands of poor patients in the region who can’t pay their bills.  They have a large campus with the hospital & clinic, an elementary & secondary school, a printing press, a nursing school, and a therapeutic feeding center for malnourished children.  On my once weekly trip I often do echocardiograms on children with murmurs to look for congenital or rheumatic heart disease.







Intermittently, pediatric residents visit for an elective rotation from Loma Linda University: 





Cristy Shank, medical director, doing some teaching in the clinic.






Ryan Hayton, surgeon, hard at work in the operating theatre.


Drs. Hayton & Shank conferring about a patient.



Children in the Nutrtional Unit, the unit is supported by AmeriCares.


AHI Malawi meeting


A meeting of the doctors and administrators affiliated with Adventist Health International  (AHI) in Malawi.  A great time to talk amongst the three hospitals and the staff helping with dozens of smaller clinics around Malawi.














We did a quick tour of the ICU & cardiology clinic at the end of the meeting. Coming along nicely, if I do say so myself.  Thanks mainly to Kelvin Sawyer from AHI who has worked long hours constructing this building!  And thanks to the many people who support Adventist Health International and missions like Kelvin’s around the world.




Blantyre and Southern Malawi


I thought we should post a few pictures from around town. We usually don’t take the camera out when we are walking or doing errands. But, we decided to at least take some pictures while driving around. Blantyre is a city with about 700,000+ people and it is the biggest city in Southern Malawi. The surrounding region is estimated to have around 6 million people.

Here are some pictures taken while driving around town:






The suburbs of the city…




Leaving town headed into the rural areas ...