Capital hill banks on UK grant for the revival of health systems

[Deeq A.]

Capital Hill is banking on four grants from the United Kingdom-based Global Health Partnership (GHP) to help tackle persistent challenges in the country’s health sector.

The grants, amounting to over £700,000, are expected to strengthen Malawi’s health systems, address workforce shortages, and improve service delivery across urban and remote areas.

The Ministry of Health said the new funding from the Global Health Partnership is a major boost towards equitable and quality healthcare delivery in Malawi.

Secretary for Health, Samson Ndolo, said the grants will play a pivotal role in addressing some of the system’s most pressing challenges, including critical shortages of skilled personnel, uneven workforce distribution, and leadership gaps.

“If you look at the impact of capacity building, if you have trainers, in theory, yes, but you can never say everybody. We should build enough capacity even after this program is done. We need to continue the capacity-building efforts, which we cannot do in one year, but over time we should be able,” Ndolo explained.

The Deputy Development Director at the British High Commission, Dan Pine, stressed the importance of investing in health workers. He said: “It’s clear that health workers are the backbone of the health system here and there are quite a lot of gaps when we look at how the health system is working here across the various districts of Malawi.”

“Trying to find ways of supporting health workers in a sustainable way here is what we’re really trying to do and these partnerships between organizations in the UK and partnerships across Africa as well, so you interview the lady from Kenya, are a great way of trying to build that capacity sustainably,” Pine said.

The program is expected to run from April 2025 to January 2026, The initiative will focus on Malawi, Ethiopia, and Somaliland, with Malawi receiving four targeted grants for key health institutions.

GHP country representative, Dickens Binali, noted that the motivation and well-being of healthcare professionals is central to the quality of care they provide:

“There has to be initiative, there have to be modules that has been set up for these healthcare workers to continuously learn and develop themselves and be able to stand out in their field.

As you know, the medical field is one of the fields that is quite involved. So the new disease is coming in, so there have to be those initiatives where you are giving that platform for them to continuously learn,” Binali narrated.

The grants include just over £130,000 from Cambridge Global Health Partnership to Kamuzu University of Health Sciences and just under £200,000 from Florence Nightingale Foundation for the Nurses and Midwives Council.

Others are £199,773 from Amref Health Africa UK and Malawi for the Medical Council, and £199,115 from the International Centre for Eye Health, also for KUHeS.

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Matiffi Ngwira
Matiffi Ngwira is a professional journalist based in Malawi with over six years of experience in the media industry.

His work focuses on reporting and storytelling that highlights key social, political, and economic issues, among others.

Passionate about transparency and development, he has covered major stories shaping Malawi.

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