Kamuzu Central Hospital service delivery

This afternoon my wife visited a relation who was bitten by a snake last Saturday evening and rushed to KCH the same night. The young man was given pain killers, put on a drip and told to wait for a doctor. As of noon on Monday no doctor had attended to him!

A year ago a young lady was involved in a bus accident in Dedza and was rushed to KCN with a cut on her forehead. It must have been on a Friday evening. The wound was not attended to the whole weekend. Rather she was told that the wound would be stitched up come Monday. When Monday arrived the nurses said the wound was not clean and as such could not be sown - there was still grass and other foreign objects from the accident a few days earlier that the nurses never bothered to clean.

Now am not sure if this is a precedent but these two cases where people are not attended to over weekends raises some questions about the seriousness of the hospital staff in providing quality health care considering they are a big referral hospital. These two incidents sound like emergencies to me and to have them wait for days before being attended to by a doctor is sad, very sad actually.

Some of these ads!

I have just been listening to a radio advert for one of the telecoms operators. In the ad a young man is writing to his uncle in Australia telling him just how cheap it is to make an international call to him.

I was left rather baffled by it all. Is it REALLY necessary for him to tell his uncle about calling rates? Are there no better things to tell his uncle like the current fuel shortage? And anyhow if the rates are so cheap why not just make the darn call and tell him all about the rates?

One thing I know is that if any of my nephews or nieces called me up to tell me how cheap international calls were on Vodacom or whatever other network my response would be “wasowa nkhani zonena, eti?”

The cost of fakes

I have been procrastinating about getting a duplicate key made because I had no desire to get stuck in the traffic going across the Lilongwe bridge. But when puss came to shove I dragged myself for the journey.

My first stop was at a hardware shop next to the police mobile force. I walked in and all the ‘shop attendants’ all seemed busy with nothing. After capturing their attention and showing them the key I wanted duplicated they said they don’t duplicate those kinds of keys. I couldn’t be bothered to ask why seeing the lackluster attention (or inattention) I got. I proceeded down the road to Lambat’s. Oh, what a difference. The owner greeted me from quite far off, took my key and said it was a fake Chinese key and they don’t do duplicates for those. Despite it being written UNION he spotted the fake. He explained that any credible key cutter in town will not or can’t duplicate these fakes.

I started my tiring journey back across the bridge in the heat and dust of the afternoon. I burnt fuel which I hear is running low at most of Lilongwe’s pumps. I wasted my time and effort but at least came out of the whole experience a little smarter: these Chinese fakes cost a lot more that you initially think!