The deadly rains in the Wet

 Photo: A village hospital ward in Malawi. This one looks very new and therefore very clean.

Limited has just come to tell me his sister has died. She has been in the local village hospital with spinal injuries since her house fell down in the recent torrential rains last week. He said she was in IC but I suspect in Malawi that means two packets of aspirin as opposed to the one in a general ward or something approximating.

The government runs the hospital system in Malawi and things tend to be basic at the best of times in Africa and never more so at present when there is a major foreign exchange problem. The services are free and probably better than nothing but given hygiene issues that may be debatable. Having said that, any major injury is unlikely to get the treatment required and doctors and nurses are few and far between at the rural hospitals. 

If any surgical equipment exists it is of the most basic kind and generally antiquated but there are no surgeons or staff to carry out even minor surgery so whatever exists cannot be put to any use.
 

The system is three-tiered and overall is designed to fill the needs of the top tier first, then to the second tier and finally to the rural hospitals on the third tier. The problem comes when there are only enough supplies for the top tier, and few for the other levels. When this happens the third tier receives no supplies at all. This can mean between supply shipments, a typical rural hospital may have nothing on its shelves, not even a band-aid or an aspirin. When its supplies run out the word spreads quickly and the village people stop coming to the hospitals.

 

But even at the top tier there are few doctors or nurses and most equipment is broken, in need of repair, that is if it exists in the first place. The country has less than 100 doctors and 3,000 nurses in total for just over 15million people. Nearly half of those who graduate will leave the country to work.

There are international aid schemes which seek to help but the eternal problem in all of Africa is corruption, incompetence and the inability of funds to not only reach the source of the problem but for enough to last to actually make a difference. It is in truth, thoroughly depressing. When you live in Africa long enough you do come to the conclusion that the only way change will ever come about, the only way lives will be improved, is when the people themselves find the will and the way to make it so. In the meantime the people keep dying.

Money from rich countries has trapped many African nations in a cycle of corruption, slower economic growth and poverty. Cutting off the flow would be far more beneficial, says Dambisa Moyo. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123758895999200083.html

One can only assume that the local hospital had at least aspirin and bandaids when Limited's sister was injured. She was a few years older than him with two children. Her husband died some years ago. Limited pretty much supports his whole family and this is his third or fourth sibling to die out of the seven. Life is hard in Africa. We will give him money to take the bus to his village for the funeral. He needs 10,000 Kwacha which is about $30.

The value of the Kwacha has halved in the past year so 12 months ago it would have cost around $15 to take a bus to his village and help with funeral expenses. In the same time food costs have doubled - and we think we have problems. Having spent quite a few years in India and more than a decade in various African countries I am a tad touchy when people living in the developed world whinge about how 'hard' life is and complain about the flaws in Western democracy. They really have no idea.

The Western world, the modern world, the democratic world with all its faults remains the best that humanity has ever achieved and provides the greatest amount of freedom, security and quality of life to the greatest number of people than has ever been known in history. Living here makes one increasingly aware of how thin is the veneer of civilization and how important it is that those who are blessed with life in the developed world should work as hard as they can to maintain what they have.

In this country the life expectancy is 53.5 years and that is mainly because Africa is corrupt, incompetent, inefficient and lacking in community consciousness where those who have power feel a responsibility to everyone in the country and are held to account. And yes, democracy is flawed, politicians can be incompetent, government can fail and there is corruption at some level in some developed nations but it is utterly trivial by comparison and the life that most live, particularly Australians, is something to which many living in developed nations would aspire and of which Africans can only dream.

  Limited's father is also dead and his mother cares for three or four orphan grandchildren and no doubt will have another two on her hands. It doesn't seem fair when life in general is so hard. Then again, if she had been quadriplegic or paraplegic and survived it would have been much worse. Death is often a blessing and never more so than in such places.