Articles

Jessie Gombe, 16, is one of the teen mothers in John village, Group Village Fundi in Mulanje district who is married to Francis Kapwepwe, 23, from the same village. The couple relies on farming to earn a living as they grow sweet potatoes, tomatoes, and maize. Despite being knowledgeable in farming, the health-related topic was a big problem that saw Tadala Radio Listening Club approaching them to fill the gap on knowledge on this issue. Jessie said that Tadala RLC approached her when she was only 5 months old pregnant and that she was given a wheel of life-saving practices, and later on, she...

Gertrude Kaukonde, 32, is a mother of two children aged seven years and seven months. Living in a typical village of Chikwekwe, Traditional Authority Mlumbe, Zomba, Gertrude lacked knowledge on various health topics. She never went to the clinic to have Antenatal Care (ANC) services when she was pregnant with her first child. Even when she was pregnant, Gertrude did not know the signs and symptoms of pregnancy and mistook them for a headache. “When I was pregnant with my first child, both my husband and I did not know about it. We only thought it was a headache that would go away in a few hou...

Community structures such as volunteers, health promoters, and Village Health Committees play a vital role in ensuring that societies change for the better. These structures advocating for health are slowly driving the health agenda by working collaborate to bring social change in their areas. The use of community structures such as Radio Listening Clubs and Community Theatre groups has proven to increase uptake of health messages in the most hard-to-reach areas. Government extension workers such as HSAs applaud the structures that the HC4L project used in its project citing that they have le...

Kasiya Radio Listening Club (RLC) from Traditional Authority Wimbe, Group village headman Kasiya in Kasungu district is making great strides in ending waterborne diseases. It is one of the local structures working under the Health Communication for Life (HC4L); a social behavior change project that seeks to improve the health-seeking practices of rural masses to foster health service uptake. Established in 2017, the club is at the forefront ensuring that people in the area are well informed on health issues affecting them. While conducting their monthly community outreach meeting in November...

As young mothers living in rural areas, there is a big problem when it comes to accessing health information when they are pregnant, during delivery, and even after the birth of the baby. One will notice that a pregnant woman is not going together with her husband to a nearby health facility to receive important health-related information such as the importance of sleeping under a mosquito net, eating food that is rich in six groups of food nutrients, hygiene, and sanitation, and other important health information. One of the women is Rose Nkhoma who lives at Mafela Village, Group Village Hea...

Peter Mpuzela of Msitsa Village, Traditional Authority Chakhaza in Dowa district is aged 25 and married to Evelyn Archangel. This is a young couple that just got married in March 2018. The wife is now five months pregnant and goes to an ante-natal clinic at Chakhadza Health Centre. The husband is a mobile vendor who sells mangoes between Mponela and Dowa markets. Like many women, Evelyn started going to the antenatal clinic alone and life was just as normal. However, on 17th November 2018, Evelyn chanced a Hope Community Theatre Group performance on the importance of involving husbands in ant...

Through its Health Communication for Life (HC4L) project, Creative Centre for Community Mobilization (CRECCOM) continues to disseminate health information in Lilongwe, Dowa, Ntcheu, Kasungu, Balaka, Zomba, Machinga, Mulanje, Mchinji, and Mangochi districts to increase adoption of health-seeking behaviors among Malawians in the districts. Among other activities being implemented namely targeting home visits to pregnant couples and lactating mothers using the wheel of life-saving practices, and targeting community sensitization meetings to reach pregnant couples, adolescents as well as caretake...