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DAY 2: SCOTS CHARITY’S HOSPITAL OF HOPE
fortnightly and then monthly. We have drugs at the moment but the danger is that we run out. “If this happens we need to start from the beginning again to have the best chance of success, and this means more trips to the hospital which she will struggle to make. “There is no chance of a cure for her but we are trying to manage the symptoms and trying to reduce the speed with which the disease can spread. “Violet’s family have been helping pay the cost of her travel to the hospital after treatment at a private clinic in Mozambique did not work well.” The number of cancer diagnoses in Malawi have more than doubled in the last decade, with 180,000 patients expected by 2021. And it is feared thousands of people will be left to die in unimaginable pain unless they get access to crucial palliative care like that being delivered at Mulanje Mission Hospital.
Annie’s next patient Olivia, 36, has cervical cancer and has been admitted for a blood transfusion and pain relief medication.
In the UK, the disease would hopefully have been picked up through a routine screening test, and many women successfully beat it through surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
Olivia is unlikely to be so lucky and is visibly enduring severe pain.
One problem for Annie and her colleague Mirrium Mumba, 27, is that the patient has presented at the hospital without a family member or friend, and they cannot keep her in care indefinitely. Annie said: “Her treatment is palliative but we hope that we can make her much more comfortable.
“We will have to ask the village chiefs who is able to come to collect Olivia from hospital and care for her in her home.
“Everything that we would like to do we cannot do but we are doing what we can to make her life better.”
EMMS International launched their Every Life Matters campaign in November and the UK Government have agreed to match donations from the public pound for pound.
This means cash – used to train more healthcare workers, improve access to healthcare, and support families to grow their own food – from big-hearted Scots will go twice as far.