Chata, Malawi

Making latrine lids

Health initiatives in Chata Area Development Programme (ADP) have reduced the incidence of cholera outbreaks.

Unfortunately they can still occur when people from adjacent villages, with no diarrhoea disease control programmes, seek treatment at the health centre situated in the heart of the ADP.

Another contributing problem is that sewage from Lilongwe city pollutes the Lumbadzi and Lilongwe Rivers, which flow along the borders of the ADP.

Chata ADP responded promptly to the outbreak by providing drugs and medical supplies. Sadly, four people in the ADP area died of cholera-related illness, but the ADP’s cholera prevention and treatment initiatives successfully averted a higher death toll.

With a donation from World Vision New Zealand’s Global Aid Partners fund, Chata ADP bought maize flour for 4000 farming families. The timing was critical, as maize, the staple food, had become too expensive for most people to buy and almost impossible to source. Additional funding from World Vision Taiwan helped the ADP purchase seed and fertiliser for over 1900 households.

Community leaders took responsibility for selecting the families most in need of food relief, distributing 10kg of maize flour to each family. This enabled people to leave their immature maize to grow, rather than eat it. Chata ADP provided 2.5 tonnes of beans for distribution with the flour.

The food relief also brought back some families who had left the ADP area in search of employment in the tobacco estates and or in nearby Lilongwe City. This partially redressed a 25 percent reduction in school attendance that the hunger situation caused.