The scourge of avoidable neonatal mortality in Malawi

The infants at Chatinkha nursery, the baby ward in Queen Elizabeth hospital in Blantyre, Malawi’s second city, are lined up in wooden cots, wrapped in brightly coloured fabric. Many have nasogastric tubes. Some are crying, others are listless. Kondwani Kawaza, Malawi’s first ever neonatologist, looks out over the ward. Many of the infants will die before the end of the month.

About 15 of the 200 babies admitted every month are diagnosed as having sepsis, but Kawaza says that this is the “tip of the iceberg.” He thinks that if they could diagnose it properly it would be the leading cause of death.

Survival decreases substantially for every hour that a patient with septic shock doesn’t receive effective antibiotics. Those that don’t die face brain damage, organ impairment, and lifelong behavioural problems.

“You have a mother who has waited for nine months to get a baby,” says Kawaza, “And then you lose that baby to a potentially treatable condition.”