LILONGWE-(MaraviPost)-Malawi ‘s First Lady Monica Chakwera has appealed to organisation and people of good will to work hand in hand with government in making sure that people especially rural women are aware of breast cancer.
Chakwera made a call on Tuesday night, October 12, 2021 at a fundraising dinner organised by Think Pink Malawi to remember the life of its founder Blandina Khondowe who died of cancer in November 21, 2020.
The first lady said it is sad that women are dying of breast cancer because they lacked information about the disease.
“Let us all borrow a leaf from the life from Blandina Khondowe who wanted to take breast cancer messages to rural communities. Each one of us should take this responsibility to inform other women in our villages about breast and cervical cancer.
We need to get organised to teach our women in the villages on breast cancer and educate them on self-breast cancer exam,” she said.
Chakwera who made a donation of MK1 Million said medical research shows over 80 percent of breast cancer cases are curable if detected early.
She therefore asked women to always go for cancer examination, screening and treatment saying cancer is not e death sentence since it can be cured if detected early.
She expressed happiness to note that some corporate institutions have teamed up with Think Pink Malawi in raising awareness about the disease.
The first lady also advised medical practitioners to speed up in making referral on cases that needs special treatment.
Minister of Health Khumbize Chiponda Kandodo said the presence of the first lady at the event demonstrates government commitments to fight cancer in the country.
She said President Lazarus Chakwera has ordered her ministry to complete the construction of cancer center at all cost.
She added that some of the challenges cancer patients are facing will be overcome once the cancer center becomes operational.
“Government is doing all it can to fight against the disease. We have enough drugs for treatment of various cancers in Malawi,” he said.
Co-founder of Think Pink Cleanor Nkosi thanked men for who stand with her organisation to fight against breast cancer.
She described Khondowe as a very passionate lady who was very instrumental in advocating for adequate cancer equipment in hospitals.
“Even at a time she knew she was dying she could still talk to people about the danger of danger and the importance of early detection,” she said.
She said the fight against cancer is being challenged by fear and misconception in communities adding; “it is not true and proper for one to believe that once you have cancer then your breast will be removed.”
Nkosi said all the funds raised will be used to buy a bus which her organisation be using when carrying out programs in communities.
Khondowe was an advocate for breast cancer awareness and she spoke highly about lack on facilities and access to equitable management of the disease.
Born on October 12, 1980, she also founder of Hope for cancer Foundation and was affiliated to global and local cancer associations.
Malawi and Bidvest Wits striker Gabadinho Mhango has been appointed as brand ambassador for the Hope for Cancer Foundation (Hocaf).
The footballer was unveiled in Blantyre on Friday at an event held at Ryalls Hotel where ex-Miss Malawi, Blandina Khondowe, the foundation’s initiator said Gaba was the right personality for the position due to his hardworking spirit and fame.
“Gaba has a larger following and with the initiatives we have put in place to raise awareness about cancer, we believe he will be influential in helping us reach out to such masses,” said Khondowe.
According to Hocaf, Mhango and Khondowe’s partnership is ideal considering that both have overcome adverse challenges in life to become stars.
The former Nyasa Big Bullets forward said he was happy to be a part of the fight against cancer in Malawi and that as a footballer would love to reach out to people especially those facing social and health problems.
“A lot of people don’t have the right information about so many diseases such as cancer. So to be part of this is something from my heart. I thank Hope for Cancer for choosing me in the campaigns to raise awareness for cancer,” expressed the Premier Soccer League star.
Khondowe, a two-time breast cancer survivor, founded the Hocaf in 2015.
This followed the establishment of her Think Pink Malawi initiative to raise awareness about cancer.
Her dream has been to establish a wellness facility which will be a one-stop centre for the management of cancer and provision of assistance in good nutrition as well as fitness as one way of fighting cancer.
It is health, Blues’ Orators, that is real wealth.Not gold and silver.
In agreement with Mahatma Gandhi who said this are, first, the much-touted but unfruitful Malawi Public Service Reform Commission chaired by none other than the beleaguered Vice- President Dr Saulos Klaus Chilima and, second, our President Peter Mutharika.
Emphasising the centrality of good health, the Chilima Commission shortlisted the Health Sector among the reform pioneers due to its “key role in economic transformation and in creating the foundations for sustainable development”.
A high-sounding and imposing statement which is, however, empty if the ‘reforms’ we have seen to date are anything to go by.
“The Ministry of Health: Quality Health is vital to support people engaged in economic transformation and also an essential for creating a foundation of sustainable development,” the Commission wrote in its final report.
Even Mapwiya Muulupale was fooled into thinking: At long last, we are heading somewhere.
The reality is that the Ministry of Health (MoH), today, is no better than it was before the whole reform hullaballoo started.
This is why revered Blues’ Orators, if you all rise and condemn me for counting my chickens before the eggs had hatched, I will stand guilty as charged.
Often times, Blues’ Orators, we blame our woes on parliamentarians. But with respect to say, the construction of the National Cancer Centre in Lilongwe, parliamentarians passed the requisite bill in August 2014.
But while cancer activists, the likes of the ‘robustly’ surviving Mrs Blandina Khondowe and pals, with very little resources and armed only with ‘robust’ patriotism are delivering well-coordinated sensitisation campaigns without any personal gain, merely moving the already funded National Cancer Project is something our paid experts at the ministry are yet to lift a finger on.
The wisdom that ‘excuses will always be there but opportunity will not’ should have perhaps prefaced the Chilima Commission Report because, as a nation, we excel in finding excuses which any idiot, robust or otherwise, can find anywhere, any time without trying; than exploiting opportunities which are as rare as hen’s teeth.
MoH Spokesperson Adrian Chikumbe in a recent interviews aid all “logistical issues” have been resolved and remaining is the financiers’ “No Objection Order” for construction works to begin.
Which logistics?
Why was the “No Objection” not sought in a manner befitting the emergency that the National Cancer Project is?
Are these MoH officials not aware that while they are busy concocting their unpatriotic repertoire of excuses, Malawians are needlessly dying of cancer?
Am I, therefore, wrong to call the MoH as the Ministry of Death?
The most irritating thing about all this is that MoH has only updated us after Members of Parliament (MPs) under the Parliamentary Committee on Health – arguably the only functioning committee besides the Public Accounts Committee – demanded a progress report.
Fifteen months after Parliament approved a Loan Authorisation Bill to borrow $13 million (about K5.4 billion at the time of borrowing) from the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) Fund, not a single brick is on site, not to say a wheelbarrow!
In fact, adverts have just been flighted.
Apparently, MOH’s only excuse coming close to sensible is that the project delayed because the government was yet to source additional funding.
Someone unilaterally increased the budget from $15 million to $40 million via unauthorised changes to designs and specifications.
The questions are: who revised the design and specs after the fact, and assuming the changes were imperative, which nitwit overlooked them when the bill was being presented to Parliament?
And to add salt to injury, Chikumbe is still not 100 percent sure about the December 2016 date. And guess you what, he already has a scapegoat: development partners!
This apathetic attitude to life-or-death initiatives like the National Cancer Centre is, among other things, why we are where we are.
The delay is negatively impacting us socially and economically. We are sending connected people abroad at a high cost while for those without names, Lord have mercy!
The 2,000 cancer cases the centre is supposed to treat annually represent 2,000 if not more poor Malawians, whose lives are now at risk, a risk which keeps multiplying every day.
One thing is for sure, if the project had moved from Lilongwe to Blantyre as was wanted by Democratic Progressive Party, by now, construction would have taken off.
I know this statement will put some people on the defensive but shoot the messenger all you wish; this is the sad fact about Malawi.
Talking about shameless blatant selfishness, even as they are sitting on National Cancer Centre construction, Lilongwe District Health Office health workers boycotted a full-board donor-funded workshop for want of ‘robust’ subsistence allowances.
I cannot agree more with their Principal Secretary MacPhail Magwira, who penned them on September 27, 2016, saying such conduct was “unprofessional and irresponsible”.
Had he added that further procrastination of the National Cancer Centre under whatever pretext, is equally “unprofessional and murderously irresponsible”, I would have given him 10 out of 10.
On the other hand, I disagree when in the same letter, he implies that what we should worry about, vis-à-vis the boycott, is“the potential to drive away would-be donors”.
This sick penchant of moving our arses only when donors are looking is yet another reason why brilliant initiatives like the Malawi Public Service Reform, this National Cancer Centre, the Vision 2020 and many others before them, die on shelves.
The day we change this mentality, the moment people at MoH realise that they are paid to save Malawians’ lives and not donors’ livelihoods, is the day we will start moving.
Come to think of it, the hopelessness of the reform-resistant Ministry of Death is why good old ‘robustly healthy’ Peter Mutharika – the man imbued with nine lives of a cat, the septuagenarian with a 30-year-old’s anatomy, the millionaire whose livelihood costs us about K5 billion per year going by the 2016/17 budget of the State Residences, the culprit appointing ineffectual ‘Ministers of Death’ and their third-rate principal secretaries – maintains a medical insurance in the United States of America behind our backs.
Who can blame him?
Given half a chance, would you not dump MASM for a medical insurance in the big apple, to dodge our badly equipped hospitals for state-of-the-art clinics where after ‘nyamakazi’ (rheumatism) treatment, one is guaranteed “life” for a very long time; to the chagrin of haters?
Since, unlike the man we elected as president in 2014, we cannot afford medical insurance in the USA, to survive, we should demand that our leaders and health officials start doing – as a minimum – what they are paid to do.
The natural starting point is the Ministry of Death which should reform back into a ‘robust’ Ministry of Health deserving the name.
It is ‘robust’ health, Blues’ Orators, that is real wealth and not pieces of gold or silver, no matter how ‘robustly’ they glimmer.
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