Karonga Hospital sewer gets fixed

Karonga District director of health and social services David Sibale has commended Welt Hunger Hilfe, a German organisation, for maintaining a sewer system at Karonga District Hospital that got damaged some years ago.

Speaking in an interview on Friday after inspecting the maintenance work, he said the initiative will go a long way in reducing water bills the hospital has been accumulating.

Sibale said due to some water leakages and a poor sewer system, the hospital has been paying K4.5 million for water per month, a situation he said was a big burden to the hospital administration.

He said apart from maintaining the sewer system, Welt Hunger Hilfe has also built modern toilets, upgrade the 110mm sewer system to 250mm and drilled a borehole which will be supplying backup water to 40 000 litre-capacity reservoirs.

“We are thankful for this kind of support because this hospital was built some years ago and it was depreciating and giving us several challenges that we couldn’t resolve on our own,” he said.

Welt Hunger Hilfe construction supervisor Jonathan Nyirenda said they tembarked on the project after noting that the hospital had a gap in water, sanitation and hygiene.

“We want this hospital to be a user-friendly hospital in terms of water, sanitation and hygiene that is why we saw it fit to come up with this intervention so that hygiene is not compromised,” he said.

Paramount Chief Kyungu of Karonga and Chitipa called on the people to own and take care of the facility, saying the absence of hygiene at any place leads to waterborne diseases.

“Let us take care of the facilities. This is a very welcome development to the people of Karonga. Vandalism of any sort, therefore, will never be tolerated,” he said.