Almost 20 million people call Malawi home and about 40% of them are children. Only about 45 of these 20 million people call themselves pediatricians. And out of the about 45 pediatricians in Malawi, less than 10 of them are local.
This is a statistic the Malawi Children’s Initiative has been working to change. Also known as MCI, the initiative was first founded in 2017 by two Chapel Hill doctors, Elizabeth and David Fitzgerald.
“It’s human nature when you hear these things that you want to help, but I think people often don’t know how,” Elizabeth Fitzgerald said. “My husband and I started this organization to really facilitate people wanting to do good and connect the two communities that we love.”
Elizabeth Fitzgerald said the inspiration for the initiative dates back to 2011, when she came to Malawi to work for a pediatric outpatient HIV program.
“I wandered into the hospital next door 50 feet away,” she said. “In contrast to the Baylor building which was air conditioned and had translators, you went into the hospital and it was just overwhelming. Literally five children to a bed, people dying without any help. And so I started volunteering in that hospital and really that changed my life.”
Since starting in 2017, MCI has funded scholarships for children to attend school, provided meals to families and built a pediatric lab in Kamuzu Central Hospital. The initiative is also currently fully sponsoring two pediatricians-in-training.
“In addition, we provide laboratory services for children in this one hospital,” Elizabeth Fitzgerald said. “We manage the nutritional rehab unit, which is where all the malnourished kids go. And then we provide nursing services. We really do a lot within that hospital.”
Although MCI has helped make significant improvements like this since starting, Elizabeth Fitzgerald said there is still a lot of work left to do. The KCH hospital sees over 25,000 children a year and Fitzgerald said one in 20 children admitted into the hospital dies. There also aren’t many resources for extremely sick children and machines like ventilators are limited.
“So there’s only one ventilator for children,” she said. “Actually, there’s only about five in the whole country of 20 million people. And there’s no critical care trained doctors.”
Elizabeth Fitzgerald said MCI’s long-term goal is to eventually build a hospital to provide these services. She said the focus right now though is the pediatrics patients at KCH. A big part of this focus is Sunday’s Run for Malawi, where this year’s goal is to raise $100,000.
“We’ll have both adult and kids bands, we’ll have food and drink,” she said. “We’ll have a bouncy house and slides, and all sorts of activities for the kids as well.”
For additional details about the run and how to sign up, visit the Run for Malawi website.
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