Dambe Health Center is Open!

Dr. Emily Wroe of Abwenzi Pa Za Umoyo—as Partners In Health is known in Malawi—wrote this week with a fantastic update. Wroe is director of clinical services at APZU.

Dear colleagues, friends, and supporters,

It is with tremendous joy that I write on behalf of Abwenzi Pa Za Umoyo to tell you that today, April 25, Dambe Health Center opened its doors to its first patients—108 of them, to be exact.

You all understand the long road and the impact behind this day, so you know how utterly overjoyed our team is to write to you now. Dambe is home to our most vulnerable and hard-to-reach patients—it’s a region plagued by prohibitive user fees and little access to care for years, except for those able to walk many hours to the hospital. The community has met floods, drought, typhoid, and a destructive fire—all in just the past year. When very sick patients are presented at our morning hospital rounds and the nurse mentions they are from Dambe, everyone nods their head in recognition and respect for the reasons patients arrive in such late stages of their illnesses.

We saw 108 patients today, a number we expect to double or triple in the coming days. Our staff tested 32 of them for HIV. They found five patients with hypertension so severe they are at risk of stroke. They found four cases of suspected tuberculosis and sent two severe malaria cases for hospitalization. They found one thyroid mass and screened five patients for cervical cancer. In a testament to the patients’ previous lack of access to health care, two-thirds of the patients tested for HIV had never previously been tested, and 47 of the 61 malaria tests were positive—and it is not malaria season.

Our passionate and energetic interdisciplinary team has plans right out of the gate to make Dambe a model health center, with programs such as integrated women’s health services and integrated screening for chronic conditions for all patients, and they are already talking about universal health coverage targets to reach 100% coverage for HIV and child malnutrition.

Today, we celebrate access to quality care for people who have needed it for a long time. We celebrate our partnership with the Ministry of Health and our passionate team. We celebrate and are thankful for the support from all of you to make it possible. We celebrate the essence of why we do this work and note that it was shining through in everyone’s smiles today.

Thank you, and with love from Neno,

Emily Wroe, on behalf of the APZU family

64-year-old Matilda Nikolasi talks with clinician Joe Lusaka at the newly opened Dambe Health Center. She was the first of many patients seen on opening day last Monday. Photo by Nandi Bwanali / Partners In Health

Partners In Health staff move equipment into Dambe Health Center in Neno, Malawi. The new clinic will provide health care to nearly 30,000 people. Photo by Lila Kerr / Partners In Health