While we’ve not made any clinical visits in the past year, we do hear regularly how the students and clinicians we support and mentor are coping with studies, work and everyday life during the pandemic.
January 2021: all quiet at Malawi’s College of Health Sciences, Lilongwe Campus.
The students recommenced their courses in September 2020, but a new wave of Covid-19 infections caused the College of Health Sciences in Lilongwe to cease lectures again in January 2021. This was the latest interruption to their courses, which began with a teachers’ strike in 2018-19. But we have just heard the good news that students are being called back this month (February 2021).
Supplies of glasses and clinical equipment, sent via our friends at The Bananabox Trust, arrived in October 2020 and have been successfully distributed to the clinics.
A lens meter is added to the equipment at Embangweni Mission Hospital.
A lens meter and glasses arrive at Ekwendeni Mission Hospital (left), and an elderly patient arrives for an eye test (right).
Equipment delivered to Mzimba government hospital with the help of staff at Embangweni Mission Hospital.
We’ve just published our February 2021 ‘Newslink’ email newsletter, which gives a more detailed round-up of the last six months’ activity. You can view it here. And you would be very welcome to sign up to receive it regularly.