Confusion in Karonga over family planning messages

There is confusion among health service providers in Karonga district amid reports that some of them are going around communities, sensitizing women to stop using implants as a method of family planning stating they are a major cause of cancer among females.

Example of an Insertion

According to Deliwe Msiska district manager for Support for service Delivery Integration (SSDI) a team of volunteers working for Emmanuel Nutrition Counseling has been going in churches and other public places with a nutrition machine which they use to detect vitamin levels in women’s bodies.

“Once a woman is detected to have lower levels of vitamins she is told that it is a result of the family planning implant in her body and that she risks developing cancer if the implant is not removed, for this reason many women have flocked to health facilities to have the implants removed,” she explained. 

Msiska revealed this during District Executives Committee (DEC) meeting on Wednesday where she reported that for the past two months the number of women opting for Depo-Provera as a method of family planning had drastically dropped across the district.

“It is no secret that this development is a big blow to all of us delivering health services in the district especially now that population boom and maternal health are a critical subject across the globe therefore I am calling on all stakeholders through the district council to draw an action plan on the matter soon,” she added.

Emmanuel International Counseling is a food supplements supplying organization owned by a Kenyan Zachius Zinga. It is registered with the poisons board of Malawi and its license number to operate a mobile herbal clinic is ADM/1/376.

Commenting on the matter District Health Officer (DHO) Charles Sungani said his office deployed health workers to investigate into the matter and that the results are worrisome, therefore he called for commitment and cooperation to put the situation in check.

“There are a number of places that have been heavily affected, as a health office we have lost many women who were on family planning methods that involve insertion of devices into their bodies who had them removed for fear of cancer, as such we need robust campaigns to win them back,” said Sungani. 

He also called on the district council authorities to put mechanisms in place that would enable it to monitor the kind of messages that various service providers render to Malawians in the district.

Investigations indicate that Emmanuel volunteers invaded churches and markets of Mpata, Ngala, Nyungwe and Kaporo.

Quizzed on the matter, a representative of Emmanuel Nutrition Counseling who only identified herself as Gladys distanced her organization from the allegations saying they are emanating from people with ill intentions.

“Whoever is putting across such messages does not represent us we do not counsel people on medical issues we only supply natural food supplements,” she narrated.

Meanwhile Karonga district health office has said it will summon Emmanuel Nutrition Counseling officials in order for them to tell their side of the story.

    

Government petitioned to abolish University Entrance Examinations

Students in Karonga and other stakeholders have appealed with government to get rid of University Entrance Examinations (UEE) as a way of admitting students into public universities saying the criteria used lacks transparency.

In a petition presented to the District Commissioner of Karonga on Monday the students state that a number of anomalies mar entrance examinations such that many deserving students fail to make it to the university.

“We feel entrance examinations are not the fairest way of deciding who deserves a place in the university or not because students do not have the opportunity to see the results of how they fared in the tests rather there are only presented with the outcome of who has made it to university or not,” reads the petition in part.

“For this reason many students who do well in the Malawi School Leaving Certificate (MSCE) fail to make it to the university because of a number of factors which some of them might be very minor to deny somebody the chance to attain tertiary education in the public university,” reads another paragraph.

Speaking in a separate interview Harris Mhango who scored 9 points in the 2012 MSCE but was left behind after sitting for the UEE in the same year said inaccessibility to marked papers of the UEE makes it hard for students like him to understand why they did not make it to university.

“If only I had the chance to see my marked sheets of the entrance examinations I would have been able to understand why I do not deserve to be in the university but as the situation stands my failure remains a very bitter pill for me to swallow,” explained Mhango.

“It is better government deals away with the system and rather faculties in respective universities should be stating minimum points every applicant should have in relevant subjects for them to apply for particular courses so that people can compete at such levels,” he explained.

PHWITIKO

Mhango further stated that the outcome of UEE gets to frustrate many young people who had hope of getting into corridors of the university such that many students like him across the country resort to committing suicide or indulging in many uncalled for behavior.

Responding to a questionnaire Ministry of Education’s spokesperson Rebecca Phwitiko said the onus to scrap off UEE remains with the senate committees of individual universities not government.

“This is not a policy issue prescribed by the Ministry, but rather a decision of university senate of individual institutions after all not all public universities use the UEE in the admission process MZUNI and neither will the new Malawi University of Science and Technology (MUST),” she added.

 “However it has to be noted that when University entrance examinations were introduced, there was the view to safeguard against discrepancies between MSCE results and performance of students once admitted into university, so this was a necessary overhead,” she said.