Speakers Chris & Anne Raine on their project in Malawi

Professor Chris Raine MBE gave a talk about his and Anne's experience in Malawi. He started off by explaining that 6% of the world population were affected by hearing loss. He explained that Malawi is a land locked country with a population of 18 million of which 55% live below the poverty line.

When Chris and Anne met a young man called Gift, he was equipped with knowledge of ENT diseases but absolutely no useful equipment with which to respond to the desperate medical needs of his community. This caused Chris and Ann to want to get involved to help. Since then they have visited Malawi several times taking equipment and helping to train people. In the country the largest hospital is the Queen Elizabeth located in Malawi's second city Blantyre and this is where Chris has visited several times. The country has around 50 district hospitals but these usually only have a clinical officer in them rather than doctors. The clinical officer could be equated to a paramedic in the UK. So Chris and his colleagues go to train the 50 clinical officers to give them a better understanding of ENT work.

Even when back in the UK Chris and his other colleagues in Bradford and Leicester give advice to the clinical officers from photographs sent to them by WhatsApp.

When asked about the long term Chris said that he was trying to get them to a stable position by getting them to refurbish their private rooms. This would then allow them to generate excess income from private patients which could then be used to keep on top of maintenance.

Up to the present donations of time and funds by many individuals, the support of medical companies, The Ear Trust and two Rotary grants, The Rotary Club of Bradford West has been able to transform his life and that of 20 other Clinical Officers in the neighbouring districts. They did this by providing the equipment and training they needed to diagnose and treat ENT disease, and they can now take pride in what they do, maintaining their own set of equipment and making a huge difference to the health of their local communities.

But they want to do more. There is still effectively only one ENT surgeon to cover the 18,000,000 people in Malawi so all donations of money and equipment will be gratefully received.