Minister of Health Honorable Khumbize Kandodo Chiponda, MP, says Malawi cannot attain universal health coverage without nurses and midwives.

She said this during the Biennial General Assembly of the National Organization of Nurses ad Midwives of Malawi on the 26th of November 2022 in Lilongwe where she presided over the ceremony as a guest of honor.

She said: “As we are talking of trying to attain universal health coverage we rely on our nurses and midwives for service delivery and they are the backbone of the ministry of health.”

She also said that being the backbone nurses need to focus on quality health service delivery. 

She said: “We also need to talk about quality. Nursing and midwifery, we call it a noble profession; it means even the behaviour; their conduct has to show the nobility of their profession.”

“But we still have some challenges, we get complaints from patients. We have some bad apples here and there so I want to encourage them that whether it is at a referral hospital or health post, or communities we still depend on them in terms of service delivery,” she added.

Chiponda further said that as a ministry they are working on the issues that affect nurses and midwives that NONM has been presenting to them such as shortage of nurses/midwives in health facilities, lack of medical supplies in hospitals, integration of Christian Health Association of Malawi (CHAM) facilities to government wage bill and promotions.

“We had an issue with CHAM facilities in terms of delay in provision of their salaries, now what we have done is we have integrated all the wage bill, all CHAM facilities wage bill will go to government wage bill soon.

On issues of promotions we have started promoting them, it is work in progress, my only plea is if we promote them they should remain in the hospital setting and not move away from the hospital,” said Chiponda.

NONM president, Shouts Simeza said he is impressed with the movements which the government is making and especially the completion of migrating salaries from CHAM to government’s wage bill.

He said: “We are excited with the migration of the CHAM payroll to government we started pursuing this issue as way back as in 2020, we have been pushing and pushing and now we are happy that finally we are told that salaries will start being run by government soon.”