Noel Siyaya, midwife

Imagine the stress of giving birth without access to water. This was the reality for women at Chikwewo Health Centre in southern Malawi. 

The health centre serves over 100,000 people and has an active maternity ward. But, it didn’t have running water on the premises. Patients and health workers had to fetch water from outside the compound at a nearby school.

The situation was especially dire at the maternity ward.  Many women who gave birth at the centre would go for hours or even days without being able to take bath or clean their clothes after delivering their child.

Noel Siyaya, the health worker in charge of the maternity unit explains: “Lack of water affects everyone seeking healthcare service here. But women and girls are much more affected. Especially when they are at the maternity ward. We need running water for infection prevention.”

Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services are especially important for vulnerable groups, including pregnant mothers, newborns and children, because that protects them from a range of life-threatening conditions.

“The delivery room was in a bad state, a mother coming to deliver would not get water to wash their hands, let alone clean themselves. The women would come and deliver, and when it was time for her to take bath, she had no one to help her,” Noel says.

Water, sanitation and hygiene is the foundation of health 

Equipping healthcare centres in rural areas with water and sanitation facilities ensures that children and mothers are seeking treatment places that are well equipped with basic and critical resources like water.

When a health care centre has clean water, hygienic toilets and handwashing facilities, mothers can have safe births as infections are kept at bay. Health workers can wash their hands when attending to patients. Medical equipment can be cleaned and sterilised between patients.  

How Amref is helping Noel’s Health Centre  

The Deliver Life project in Zambia has supported the Chikwewo Health Centre to build a reticulated water system. This includes drilling a borehole, building the piping system, and installing a solar-powered system to supply a continuous flow of water to the centre. The project also constructed bathrooms for the maternity ward, decent pit latrines for healthcare workers and patients, and an incinerator to allow for the proper disposal of waste.