The Parliamentary Committee on Health has expressed satisfaction with how Malawi is progressing in managing its health sector in dealing with various diseases. 

The committee’s chairperson Matthews Ngwale has cited how Malawi has performed on HIV prevalence rate as a positive example.

He noted: “We have achieved so many things, if you look at HIV status in Malawi is better than most of the well-developed countries even our performance on Covid-19 compared to other African countries who have better economy have done worse than has.”

Ngwale added that compared to other countries, Malawi is managing well its health sector.

“Malawi if you compare with other countries, it has done very well in terms of health services despite that our country is poorer than some of the countries that have done so badly,” said Ngwale.

Ngwale has however bemoaned a continued donor dependence syndrome in managing the sector.

“Our health system in Malawi is mostly dependent on donors across most programmes which is also a cause of serious concern when it comes to sustainability of such a positive trend.

“Government needs to work taking full financial responsibility for the sector to remain vibrant unlike shouldering all the costs on donors,” he advised.

According to Population-Based HIV Impact Assessment (PHIA) Project, second population survey Assessing HIV in Malawi shows progress towards epidemic control.

PHIA’s recently released results of a new nationwide HIV survey implemented in Malawi offer evidence of continued progress toward controlling the longstanding epidemic in the country – and provide guidance toward further steps that need to be taken.