Jumpha Clinic

Our LifeNets chairman for Malawi, Cephas Chapamba sent us a few photos of the Jumpha Clinic that and wife Patricia manage in the town of Nkhwazi. Nkhwazi is west of the capital Lilongwe very near the border of Zambia and Mozambique. It is a very busy clinic. I had the opportunity to visit it on October 12, 2008 and found a place that was clean and orderly.

The clinic is located where the countries of Malawi, Zambia and Mozambique come together. Because there is little healthcare in Zambia and Mozambique in this area, people walk across the border to Nkhwazi in Malawi to get treatment.

LifeNets provides $2000 in medicines to the clinic annually for about ten years. In addition LifeNets provided Cephas Chapamba a scholarship to receive is practioners degree which allows for him to perform some surgeries and practice a certian level of medicine. More about his scholarship at the end of this report. We have also provided scholarships others in the area.

Cephas sent us a few current photos of the clinic show below and says the following:

I had the opportunity to visit Cephas and Patricia Chapamba in Nkhwazi on October 12, 2008 and see the clinic for myself. I wrote about it in my Travelpod blog.

Today is our last day fro our visiting in people's homes of those who have received LifeNets grants. So far we are very pleased to see the progress and improvement in their lives. We start by picking up Wordsworth Rashid at his home and heading west toward Zambia. We will visit the Jumpha Clinic run by Cephas Chapamba and his wife Patricia. We have become more and more brave driving by ourselves on Malawi roads.

Driving an ambulance has been a great advantage. There are occasional police roadblocks who check for your driver's license and insurance registration. Sometimes they check cars for hemp and other drugs. When they see our ambulance they salute us and allow us to pass with no questions. I have learned to snappily salute back.

We arrived in his village called Nkhwazi where the Jumpha Clinic is located. He is the owner and chief medical person here. He is what officially is called Medical Assistant. He is on the LifeNets Developing Nations Scholarship Program studying in Blantyre to upgrade to the position of Clinical Officer. He has one year to go. This will put him in a status just below doctor. He will then be able to do surgical procedures such as C-sections, hernias, bowel obstructions, bilateral tuba ligations and much more.

While Cephas is in school he a Medical Assistant by name of Fred Chakombo who runs the clinic.

Cephas

The Chapamba's in front of their Jumpha Clinic

Waiting room at the Jumpha Clinc

Staff

He has been Medical Assistant for seven years. In the first five years he has been run the clinic from his home. He has since built a nice building across the street. He calls it the Jumpha because that's Cephas Chapamba's middle name. LifeNets has provided this clinic with medicine for the past four years. We found that while there what appear to be many clinics in Malawi, most do not provide any medicine. Also, some are not clinics and only fronts for other businesses. Some do not have properly credentialed staff and the government has been cracking down on the corrupt clinic culture. Many many clinics are there because they are sponsored by churches from the West or NGO's like LifeNets.

He gave us a tour of the clinic. We were impressed! There are about 150 patients who come through every day and this is the slow time of year. The clinic gets much busier during the rainy season. The busiest month is March. The village of Nkhwazi does not have electricity, therefore the clinic has no electrical power. At his home Cephas has solar panels and an inverter that powers his television and a few electrical appliances.

Then we looked around his property. He has just extended it further back where he plans to build a home and then turn his current home (which had previously been the clinic) into a maternity ward.
The clinic is within Malawi, but is very close to the border of Zambia and Mozambique. In those two countries there are no nearby clinics, so people come to the Jumpha Clinic.

After the tours we came back into the house and talked some more before leaving. By the way, Cephas is the brother of Jesse Nyalubwe and the son of Deloes (the woman who had the stroke). His children was are George (born 1999) and Deloes (named after his mother and born 2004).

Cephas and Patricia Chapamba showing LifeNets medicines to Beverly Kubik

Cephas Chapamba welcoming Michala and Kirsten Lockwood who visited clinic on October 12, 2008

The graduation was held at Malawi Adventist university, Lakeview campus, a constituent college of Malawi Adventist University which is affiliated with Ballaton University of East Africa and its headquarters in Kenya. The graduation took place on Sunday 26 September 2010. The graduation saw me getting out of the college corridors with a Diploma in Clinical Medicine. This will benefit me a lot in the sense that my salary with the government will rise, my responsibility at work will rise, my chance of expanding my business has increased to almost 100%,above all the community I am saving will stop travelling long distances in search of medical services since they have one right in their community. Is this not wonderful? There are a lot of benefits that could even feel this whole page, but the issue is that the LifeNets has managed to bring a Clinical officer to the Malawi nation and to UCG. My study period is 18 months intensive class work and 12 months work experience which will end in June 2011. All this with funding from LifeNets. Oh what a nice organization!

If you see properly you will see that almost four faces are dominating the pictures the one in black suit is me (Cephas) and a lady with a purple suit and a white hat is my wife Patricia she accompanied me to the ceremony since we are one body. The other man in yellow shirt is my best friend now at Nkhotakota and the other lady is his wife. (photo below).

You would be surprised to hear that we did not know this family until I went to school but when people see us, take us as brothers, we visit their family and they also do the same, this means that in addition to getting my diploma, the school has helped me add to

the number of family friends. Others are friends and relatives who came to witness the occasion, the notable names to you could be Gift Chikwera and Kennedy Nyalubwe, and do you know that without your camera which was given to Gift just 12 hours before graduation I would have a graduation without photos?

You would also be interested to know that after this diploma I have opened a lot of market for the clinic I own. I will now be able to start inpatient department, to open a maternity wing, to do some operations like hernia repairs, Caesarean sections, just to mention a few. The government of Malawi has offered me a job which shows that despite being in private sector the Malawi government is still benefiting directly from my services.

Its exciting, I could write pages, all this is to show my appreciation to LifeNets, God bless LifeNets!