Bringing Care Far and Wide

I love what I do. Save the Children trained me to care for mothers and newborns, and they give me the supplies that I need to do my job – things like scales, backpacks and thermometers. As a health worker, I get to meet and learn about new people all the time – and I really enjoy this! But most importantly, I’m glad to know that the work that I am doing is benefiting people each day. Both my husband and I are health workers. Each day we wake up early to visit patients. Much of our days are spent traveling – the mothers we visit live far apart and we must walk more than three miles every day to reach them. We live in a very mountainous area, so getting anywhere can take a lot of time. Even though our trips to visit patients can be difficult, we believe that home visits are better for the health of the mothers. So we bring the care to them. My husband and I typically visit different areas, and we each see at least five clients a day, including newborns, children, mothers, and families. I treat children under five mostly for malaria and pneumonia. And since finding clean water is usually a key issue in Malawi, and people drink directly from a river, I work with high incidences of cholera and diarrhea. I try to teach mothers as much as possible how to give oral rehydration to their children and administer life-saving medicine.