The Megaphone

It is another awesome Friday and once again we are here reading. I hope you are doing well, dear reader.

I have said this a number of times but I don't think it will  hurt if I repeat it. I always thought it was difficult to ethically balance my writing and my work. In that sense, I initially thought that it was better to avoid throwing my work into my freelance writing projects, be it for my blog or other publications. That was in my graduate sppp0chool days but working in a busy tertiary public hospital has seen me have a change of heart and deciding to use my writing as a health promotion tool.

A number of weeks ago (I am not good at time-tracking my articles) I wrote an article titled Population Watch and it was based on my experience in the Gogo Chatinkha Maternity Wing. It was a derivative of what was supposed to be a "feel-my-pain" article about how busy work has been in recent months but I decided to word in a positive way to disseminate the message of family planning and contraception. It was very interesting to see that the article got a positive reception from people including one Thokozani Mbendera who happens to be the President of Family Planning Association of Malawi (FPAM). He, in turn, asked for my permission for publishing the article on the FPAM website, a request to which I said yes. I am not sure if that article was published but I would like to think that I added a relatively neutral voice to the family planning gospel. I do hope that the shout will fall on the right ears and that the message will be applied. Hopefully these writings will make a difference in the lives of few.

I will start today's party (or noise) with the same issue of the population and women's health. I am not sure as to what the problem is but the rate at which our women are getting pregnant and delivering babies is rather worrying and counterproductive. It is interesting to note that in this day and age we still have women who bear children with hardly any gap. On the other hand, there are still women who tell straight in the face that they would like to have four or five children despite having no sustainable source of income for the family. Some of you might find my line of argument faulty but the fact remains that raising a child is expensive for the parent, society and the nation. I personally am of the idea that children deserve the best of parental care, a greater element of which involves a robust financial input. The current situation? We have a population that is outgrowing the space and resources at all levels. That calls for action, right? We all need to slow down.

I know this may sound weird but on Tuesday I found myself asking workmates whether it was possible to introduce a limit as to the number of children one can have. It might be a far fetched idea, but that might just be the way out of some of the troubles we have as a nation. I couldn't be that wrong on this one.

I probably have never mentioned this but I have at some point "played the guest" on some Whatsapp groups tp which I was invited to shed more light on some health issues. I must say it is a hectic hectic task to be answering questions on different issues in a 200 member strong Whatsapp group. This is because the questions are usually too many for proper and elaborate answers and in some cases the questions tend to overly lean towards sexual health. Infertility sinkhani yomafunsana on a Health Q and A, in my view. That being said, the other thing I have learnt through these chats is that people do not have much knowledge on one of the most serious killers in this country; cervical cancer.

I have not been around issues of women's health for too long. After my graduation, I ended up doing my clinical internships in the departments of Paediatrics, Adult Medicine and then Surgery before being switched to Gogo Chatinkha Maternity Wing where I am barely 5 months old. Here is where I am having a hands on and practical exposure to issues of women's health and one of the sad realities is that cervical cancer remains the disease that is claiming a lot of lives in as far as women are concerned despite the availability of screening for the same.

Cervical cancer, which is the commonest cancer in women in Malawi is caused by uncontrolled infections with Human Papilloma viruses. This virus is sexually transmitted and with untreated and uncontrolled infections, there is an abnormal growth of ma cells a pa khomo la chiberekero... Boom! Cancer. Despite the fact that this disease can affect any woman, there is a higher risk in those whose immune systems are impaired, like those who are HIV positive. Like every cancer, the disease can spread to and damage other organs like kidneys, the liver and the brain, leading to a slow death.

Having fed on a few morsels of knowledge on the progression of the disease, I strongly think that this shouldn't be the commonest cancer there is in Malawi. The reason is that it is something that develops ober years and with the availability of screening for the disease, there is a high chance of catching it early and treating it before spreads to other organs, a situation which limits treatment options. This brings me to the point of the day. We need to get our women screened for early diagnosis and treatment should they have the disease. I will not even talk about the signs and symptoms of the disease because by the time symptoms get to that level, the disease is usually advanced.

What is your assignment, then? All of you who have read this article need to get screened or to tell your spouses, mothers, grannies and aunties to get screened. The whole process would take about 5 minutes minus the waiting time and it hardly has any adverse effect beyond the minor discomfort you get while people are at it. Tamvana apa, I hope.

Perhaps another proxy around these issues would be the promotion of education. If you think of it, educations doesn't have much of a complicated effect. If someone is in school, they are obviously not busy bearing children at 17 years of age. If someone is in school, they realize the importance of family planning. If someone is lost in school, they hardly have time for having 9 children as they are busy chasing a PhD and postdoctoral fellowships. Something to think about.

We could talk about a whole lot of health topics through the blog. I, on the other hand feel like there are no grounds for writing about malaria when there is hardly anything that a malaria article can change. I mean... there isn't that much of a knowledge gap and a long article on the disease would only deprive us of a feel my pain, typical personalized Richie Online article. This article is a call to action and I hope it will be treated as such.

I am pretty sure that my dear readers have had an experience with some Land Rover Defender cars which have megaphones, going around locations and disseminating various messages; call to kanema wa Ambuye Yesu, warnings about water disconnection, agricultural fairs and all that stuff. Perhaps there are some which go out to do some health promotion by preaching about healthy living. If I had one of those, the content of this article would be my message. We need to slow down on the reproduction end and our women need to get screened for cervical cancer before it is too late. Sadly, I have no Land Rover Defender with a megaphone on top, but on the positive side I have a blog with an audience. This is my megaphone. Let the sound of health promotion fall on compliant ears.

By the way. Did Goodall Gondwe just (indirectly) call us fetuses?