MHEN Impressed with MCGs

Malawi Health Equity Network (MHEN) has expressed satisfaction with Mother Care Groups (MCG) role in mobilising communities in Blantyre rural to understand the benefits of child immunization.

MHEN Assistant Project Officer, Helbert Chakwawa appreciated MCG’s role after the organization toured two MCGs, namely Namende at Group Village Head Scott under Traditional Authority Somba at Mpemba and Umodzi at Group Village head Undi,  Traditional Authority Lundu at Lirangwe.

MHEN monitored the two MCGs to appreciate vaccine coverage following community mobilisation on importance of immunization on child health.

“As MHEN we are really impressed with the Namende and Umodzi Mother Care Groups since we established them in October 2024. They have managed to identify about 20 zero dose children and 66 under immunised and they have brought them back,” he added.

He therefore urged the MCGs to continue sensitising communities on immunisation to eliminate new born deaths.

“All men and community leaders should also take part in immunisation so that our children should be protected from diseases,” he added.

Chief Preventive Health Officer at Blantyre District Health Office, Innocent Mvula, said involvement of MCGs in child immunization has helped the District Health Office to increase vaccine coverage.

He said the MCGs play crucial role in covering gaps in child immunisation as some parts of Blantyre were hard to reach with community mobilization for child vaccine coverage.

“The Mother Care Groups assist Blantyre to mobilise communities on child immunisation to ensure good coverage. This resulted in reaching out to more children and reduce zero dose plus under dose children.

“Before Mother Care Groups came in, our vaccine coverage was hovering around 78% but we are now at 91%, marching towards 95% by December, 2025,” he said.

Mvula added that MCGs are crucial in providing community awareness saying that District Health Office programmes emphasises on community involvement for sustainability.

“They help to dispel the myths on child vaccination. As members of the communities, they play crucial role by providing peer to peer education to mothers,” he added.

Namende MCG member Joyce Kwazachina stated that the group persuades mothers who were initially reluctant to vaccinate their children due to myths and religious beliefs. She added that these mothers now understand the importance of child vaccination.

“We also help in other community level development activities. We did not have toilets in our health post, with our initiative, we advocated for toilets in the health center and we will soon have toilets in the facilities,” she said.

MHEN in partnership with PATH with financial support from Global Alliance Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) through the Ministry of Health are implementing a project called Identification of Zero Dose Children in four districts namely; Mzimba, Dowa, Mchinji and Blantyre.