By Isaac Jim

Blantyre, August 7, Mana: Malawi Health Equity Network (MHEN) met with Health Surveillance Assistants (HSAs) in Blantyre on Tuesday to discuss ways and means of strengthening linkage with Mother Care Groups (MCGs) in their respective areas where MHEN implements Health System and Immunization Strengthening Project which is expected to end by 2025.

MHEN which is an independent non-profit making alliance of civil society organizations and individuals that promote equitable access to quality, affordable and responsive health care services in Malawi held the meeting to also look into project achievements and challenges which MCGs face when delivering services to communities.

MHEN, Monitoring and Evaluation Officer, Florence Khonyongwa expressed hope that the MCGs will still be engaged when the project reaches the end in 2025 and that government will take over activities that are meant to promote immunization and track immunization defaulters. 

“The Mother Care Groups will be handed over to government so that they should continue working with HSAs who are also employed by government. We know that HSAs work under District Health Office on issues of preventive health and we hope that they will proceed once the project ends in 2025,” she added.

Khonyongwa disclosed that MHEN will also provide bicycles to MCGs as promised to address mobility challenges as raised by HSAs during the interface meeting.

During the engagement meeting, the HSAs pointed out mobility as one of major challenges affecting MCGs performance in their respective catchments.

Khonyongwa therefore said that MHEN was prepared to build capacity of HSAs and to look into mobility problem before leaving, observing that some MCGs were formed before some HSAs were recruited.

“We are preparing for refresher trainings, reminding the HSAs of their duties and bring in MCGs members in case some left. This will equip new members with knowledge and skills to sustain the activities,” she added.

An HSA working with Semu MCG at Light House Health Center, Maxi Chiwawula, highlighted some of the achievements citing construction of shelters and toilets on top of increased coverage of child immunization.  

Reports presented by the HSAs show that MCGs contributed a lot in increasing child immunization coverage and mobilized communities whose religious groups does not allow them medication to appreciate importance of child immunization.

Some of notable achievement were that Blantyre District Health Office provided Michiru MCG (under Chileka Health Center) with a borehole and that Michiru MCG encouraged male participation in child health care as men were seen taking children to health facilities for child immunization and other child health related services.

The HAS also noted limited transportation, no MCGs, lack of refrigeration for vaccine storage, scarcity of vaccines in other clinics and political interference as some of the challenges affecting service delivery of MCGs in their respective communities and recommended that the challenges needed to be addressed to ensure effective service delivery.

In collaboration with the Malawi Government, MHEN started engaging MCGs and HSAs through Health Systems and Immunization Strengthen Project in 2019.

Similar project was implemented in Nine districts among them, Kasungu, Mzimba North, Mzimba South, Lilongwe and Blantyre.