British doctor reveals hospital’s quick action preserved hundreds of lives in Malawi

Hundreds of lives were saved within an African country suffering from a dramatic rise found in Covid-19 situations after medical personnel helped deliver a good million-litre oxygen tank.

But people in Malawi are still braced for a large number of deaths because they're unlikely to be immunised for at least a 12 months.

Doctors and nurses are actually also battling Covid without enough PPE no vaccinations because they look after wards appearing filled by very ill patients, many experiencing the coronavirus variant primary learned in South Africa.

Since early January, there's been a fivefold climb in Covid in Malawi, with an official figure of 28,000 infections, although there is substantial underreporting of conditions in the largely rural country of 19 million.

Wards are now overflowing with Covid patients, but thanks to the quick thinking about a Uk doctor, many lives in the primary hospital in the next town of Blantyre have already been saved.

While plans have been put in place by the Ministry of Health, Dr Jamie Rylance was among the workforce of doctors who realised that as Covid was a respiratory disease, an excellent supply of oxygen would be vital to keep patients alive. Like various African countries, Malawi’s medical centres spend huge amounts buying oxygen therefore the hospital decided in March this past year to quickly try to build the its supply.

With £2 million ($2.7m) in financing from the Wellcome Trust overall health charity he was able to install an oxygen tank that delivers one million litres a day, helping clients who would otherwise battle to breathe.

“One of the great things last year was having a bit of buffer before Covid hit to have the oxygen plant in, so today even for the sickest clients it'll look after 60 or even more at high oxygen circulation rates,” he told The National. “It’s been great and I’m sure it’s saved hundreds of lives but, even so, today we are running out regarding capacity, because there are hence many people plus they need so many oxygen.”

The Queen Elizabeth Central Medical center in Blantyre, like many others across sub-Saharan Africa, is desperately short of equipment. It was strike by a wave of attacks, largely via migrant workers returning home from South Africa at Holiday. It is also the rainy season, so people are huddled together in the home.

With few infections over summer it seemed that southern Africa, using its youthful population, had largely escaped Covid unscathed. However the current wave features claimed both youthful and old.

“I’ve seen a whole lot of middle aged and youthful persons die of Covid here,” said the doctor, from Liverpool University of Tropical Medicine.

Anecdotal evidence also suggested that it was predominantly overweight people who essential intensive care beds. “I don’t however have the evidence to again it up, however in our medical center we are discovering a different demographic of folks to our normal clients,” said Dr Rylance, 44.

“There are many more obese people inside our Covid wards, a lot more diabetes plus much more hypertension. I think it’s a class thing, an inversion of what you might anticipate in other places. That is more affecting middle income, wealthier Malawians who, for reasons uknown, have high option of calorie consumption and sugar. But we’re in a fairly good situation in comparison to other areas in Malawi, because we've that oxygen tank.”

Dr Rylance, who has worked in Malawi for eight years, admits for some anxiety about the high publicity there is to the virus focusing on Covid wards without a vaccine or sufficient personal protection equipment.

“A lot of my co-workers be concerned that they haven’t been vaccinated and clearly everyone would like to be. I do believe that I am extra at risk here than in the UK practising drugs, partly through the PPE concern and partly because of the degrees of community transmission. I don’t think there’s actually any stage in being anxious but I guess you are feeling it occasionally.”

Dr Rylance likewise said he feels “inequity, not for yourself up to merely for the country generally” in not having any vaccines available.

Asked if he assumed many people are going to die in Malawi since they haven’t been vaccinated he responded, by using Zoom: “Certainly, I’m sure they'll. You can’t put lots on it but most are dying in rural communities.” He has listened to accounts of similar conditions in close by countries such as for example Zambia, Zimbabwe and Kenya.

Their only hope is getting some form of vaccine however they are resigned to African countries coming to the end of an extended queue.

“My best guess is that it will be European summer, July time, before we see anything below, and which will be simply for frontline staff.”

He has called on high-income countries to do the job more closely with the World Health and wellbeing Organisation’s Covax initiative, which is targeted at giving fair usage of vaccines globally.

“I think these governments have to have now an explicit discussion with their populations and with other governments about how exactly they'll redistribute vaccines to people who want at least as much but have significantly less,” he said.

“There’s no true animosity towards the West, it’s generally a resigned shrug. It has happened often in Africa, with various different health emergencies.”

With his hospital filled with patients, sick people have already been put in tents on leading garden while staff have learnt to adapt PPE to keep them secure.

“We have a whole laundry service in reusable gowns, which has worked effectively,” the Uk doctor said. “Not to mention it’s native and a bit more sustainable and has decreased the environmental waste.”

The hospital has innovated extensively to combat the shortages, by using a 3D printer to make face coverings and eye protection. “The PPE supply is quite intermittent and it does point to a fairly precarious placement from our perspective,” he said.