AmeriCares Responds to Urgent Aid Request from Malawi President

AmeriCares is delivering emergency medical aid to Malawi in response to an urgent plea for help from President Joyce Banda. The first shipment, carrying $400,000 worth of antibiotics, intravenous fluids, cardiac medicines and diabetes medications, leaves the aid organization’s Stamford, Conn., warehouse today destined for Lilongwe. The medicine will be delivered to the Ministry of Health for use in government-run hospitals all across the country. Two additional shipments are planned in the coming weeks.

“This donation will go a long way to help the people of Malawi who would otherwise have gone home without their prescribed medicines, of course, with dreadful consequences,” said Dr. Charles Mwansambo, Malawi’s Secretary of Health.

Banda, who visited AmeriCares headquarters to meet with AmeriCares President and CEO Curt Welling and the staff in February when she was vice president, recently asked AmeriCares for help alleviating a shortage of medicines and supplies that has led to unnecessary and preventable deaths. About 60 percent of the country’s 16 million residents live below the poverty line, and the Ministry of Health works with partner organizations overseas to sustain health care programs.

AmeriCares has been delivering aid to Malawi since 2002, supplying medicines, nutritional supplements and medical supplies to Malamulo Hospital, which serves a population of 130,000 in the southern region of the country where there are recurring food shortages and high rates of HIV and AIDS. Last year alone, AmeriCares donated enough medicines to treat more than 67,000 patients in Malawi.