From Servetus to Malawi, 17 years of children's health cooperation

Since 2005, more than 160 health workers, most of them from Health, have traveled to this African country. His work is now exhibited in the Materno-Infantil.

"This experience will give me a way of learning at another level, different from a rotation in a national hospital", says María López Cabrejas, Pediatrics nursing resident, when talking about a job that is totally different from the one she does at the Michael Servetus. She and five other health professionals, doctors and nurses, will be reinforcing the Pediatric Emergency unit at Kamuzu Central Hospital, in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi, between Wednesday and Sunday. There they coincided for a few days with the team that has just returned to Aragon. They undertook a 19-hour trip to reach the African country, where they will remain for two months within this children's health cooperation program: "We know that we are going to have a lot of work and we are going to face shocking situations and serious cases, but until we are there, no matter how much they tell you, you can't imagine it."

This program has its origins in the request of Spanish missionaries, creators of hospitals and schools in Malawi in the 2005th century, who around 2008 began to ask for support from professionals from the Aragonese Health Service. After the first years of contact, it was decided to take a leap into collaboration with the Malawi public health system starting in XNUMX, explains Carmen Ferrer, president of the Malawi-Health Association, which has the support of the Government of Aragon, the Wawitai association and the Ayuntamiento de Zaragoza. "Support was requested from health workers who voluntarily wanted to participate in this program" and it was decided to materialize this support in the large public hospital in Malawi, the Kamuzu Central Hospital, "huge due to its demand (about 7 million inhabitants) and tiny due to the number of qualified professionals, focusing above all on the Pediatric service." Reality forced us to reorient the program towards collaboration in the direct care that children needed. So we designed a project in which our professionals would transmit good practices, but from working side by side with the professionals there, working, teaching, and also learning many things," recalls Ferrer.

In 2011, with the economic crisis, the financing of the project, in the worst of times for us but especially for them, was closed, and the Health professionals decided to maintain our activity." At that time they formed the Malawi association -Health: "We decided to continue contributing our grain of sand as professionals, but also as volunteers, and we continue cooperation with our own means."

"Solidarity effort"

An objective that has been achieved thanks to the "solidarity effort of many anonymous people who have supported it financially and entities that have maintained their support." Currently, the cooperation that was born from the Miguel Servet Hospital with the health of Malawi "is no longer a project, it is a consolidated program."

Source: Heraldo de Aragón