2,596 palliative care patients, who are cared for by our partner health facilities in Malawi, are living with extreme hunger. Together, we can relieve their suffering.
These patients have incurable illnesses, and with painful, empty stomachs, they're unable to take vital medicines. Due to continuous crop failures, their families are also facing desperate hunger while navigating their loved ones' terminal diagnoses. Together, we can reach 15,576 people through our network of 21 hospitals and health centres, delivering maize flour and providing them with urgently-needed nutrition.
Watch our video where EMMS International and our partner delivered the first bags of maize flour to patients receiving palliative care in Balaka District.
Malawi Hunger Relief: Interactive Map
(Please scroll over the regions to find out more)
On 23 March 2024, Malawi’s President Lazarus Chakwera declared a State of Emergency in 23 out of Malawi’s 28 districts. Subsistence farming in Malawi is becoming ever more vulnerable due to climate change. Relentless cyclones, droughts and floods have obliterated the crops of two million farming households. Thousands of families who are facing the personal and economic tragedy that a terminal illness brings, now also face a devastating humanitarian emergency.​
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Residents in Chikwawa in Malawi have lived through Storms Ana and Freddy, which caused devastation and long term damage to families' crops. The Matron at St Montfort Community Hospital, where we recently delivered a year’s supply of maize flour for all of their patients receiving palliative care, explains that it is vital that her patients navigating the complexities of treatment, crippling family debts, inevitable withdrawal from society and now burdened by the desperation of extreme hunger, quickly receive food supplies.
Emmanuel is 45 and the father of 5 children. He is living with HIV and skin cancer, which has resulted in the amputation of his leg. Emmanuel is a farmer whose crops were carried away by flooding during Cyclone Freddy. Due to their lack of income, Emmanuel's children were forced to leave school during their primary years and his three girls married young.
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On 28th August, our partners were able to deliver maize flour to feed 306 people at Trinity Hospital in Nsanje, where Emmanuel is being treated. When he arrived to collect his maize, Emmanuel and his family hadn't eaten for three days. He says:
“When I was called to come here to receive maize I did not believe it, because I am tired of being teased, but my wife insisted that we should come. These 4 bags of maize will really help us. Thanks so much to you and the donors for this life-saving food.”
£27.04 will buy a bag of maize, feeding one family for three months.
£108.16 will buy four bags of maize flour, nourishing a typical family for one year. With a year's supply of maize, we aim not just to alleviate hunger but to restore dignity and hope to families in the midst of this food crisis and in the midst of their family crisis.
£540.80 will feed five families for one year at one of our partner hospitals or health centres.
Just £1,622.40 would provide food security for an entire hospital's palliative care families for a whole year.
Please stand in solidarity with the most vulnerable people of Malawi by donating today. Your contribution, no matter the size, will provide nourishment, helping to sustain life and uphold the dignity of Malawian families in desperate need. You can donate:
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Online, using the form below
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Through bank transfer to Account No: 06 00 06 68 Sort Code: 80-02-28
(please include your name and postcode as a reference). -
By calling 0131 313 3828
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By posting a cheque, payable to "EMMS International" to EMMS International, Norton Park, 57 Albion Road, Edinburgh, EH7 5QY