Help For Monze Mothers

 
There is much activity going on at the Church of Zambia’s Social Committee in Monze, in which we have a keen interest.

So far, the committee has already been able to step in and provide emergency transport for a lady suffering a miscarriage, provide food for a chronically-ill hospital patient, and building materials for an old lady whose house collapsed.

There are now two new, and bold, plans.

A big problem has been the Mothers’ Shelter at the Monze Hospital. The problem here is that the hospital has no room for mothers or the families of young patients, who have until now lodged at a nearby building. This building has been condemned for a list of reasons which is too horrifying to reproduce in full, but even going by the very basic standards of the area, the place is dangerous.

As a temporary measure, the mothers have been allowed to sleep outdoors by the town market, but there are no cooking or toilet facilities.

However, there is a plan to refurbish the Shelter, and this time the idea is to not just make the place habitable and sanitary, but to have it fenced off from public access, and employ a warden. The cost is probably £20,000.

The second plan, which may be over-ambitious at the moment, concerns the continuing fight against AIDS and TB. The committee in Zambia has optimistically put forward a budget of almost half a million pounds – the director has not discounted it, but says that the budget needs examination, and that such funding is certainly beyond our experience.