"My name is Anizia and I am the Matron on the paediatric oncology ward here at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in Blantyre. My role is to supervise the care the children receive as well as manage the nurses and make sure that we have enough resources on the ward.

‍

QECH is the referral hospital that treats paediatric oncology cases for the whole southern region of Malawi. Therefore, all district hospitals in the southern region refer cases to QECH. We also sometimes receive patients from the northern region too and occasionally we receive patients from Mozambique.

‍

We have 34 beds on the paediatric oncology ward. Most of the time the ward is full. We also run daily clinics and on average we see about 10 patients per day. Given how full we get, we know we need to increase the capacity of beds on this ward to accommodate the demand.

‍

‍

Unfortunately, most of our patients come from rural areas, particularly from districts that are far away. A lot of the families of children we care for have financial difficulties. Given many families live so far away from Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital, it makes it difficult for them to bring their child here for treatment and check-ups as it takes a lot of financial resources to make multiple trips here for the child’s treatment.

‍

Many families are referred to QECH by their respective district hospital which is often very far from Blantyre. This means when they come, they have to stay for long periods of time as it is too expensive to commute back and forth from their homes for their child’s treatment. As a result, the accompanying family member doesn’t have the resources for food while they are here and this can be a challenge for us. We have the resources to cover the meals for the children on the ward but it remains a challenge to provide this for their families too.

‍

Working here has been a really good journey for me because most of the time when we talk about cancer, people feel that it is not curable. However, I have seen from my professional experience most of the patients making a full recovery which is something to be happy about. With that, honestly, I can say that I have enjoyed working here because I know that my work has really impacted the children I serve. That being said, sometimes it becomes a challenge. Seeing children getting relapses is difficult. Sometimes even with the treatment we provide, some children don’t progress well so that really affects my emotional wellbeing.

‍

‍

Access to oncology medicine is often a challenge. Sometimes we have to ask the hospital for a grant to help cover the costs of medicines we require on this ward but this isn’t always possible. The main hospital pharmacy doesn’t always have the medicines we need to treat the children.

‍

World Child Cancer and IHP play the most important role in providing us with the necessary drugs we need to treat our patients. Having World Child Cancer and IHP provide these medicines is very important as it means our children are getting the drugs that they need for treatment.

‍

If we can be supported with more drugs that would be so helpful as it means that children would be getting the drugs that they require for treatment. At the moment, we do not have some critical oncology medicines so if we could access those, that would be very helpful.

‍

Thank you to all the pharmaceutical companies that have been supporting us with different types of drugs. You are doing a great thing. Please continue this good work and continue to provide us with different types of cancer drugs."

‍