physiotherapists

Physiotherapists specialise in helping and treating people with physical problems resulting from illness, accidents or ageing. Physiotherapy sees movement as central to good health and work across many areas of healthcare including paediatrics, neurology, surgery and rehabilitation.

Physiotherapists are hugely under-represented in many low-income countries despite their work often being essential to improving patients’ function and mobility. Malawi has just 27 physiotherapists to serve its population of 14 million people.

We sponsor physiotherapists at Malawi College of Medicine. This course was set up in 2010.

 

Alice came from a poor background and her parents found it difficult to support her through university. Alice is now in her second year of training and knows that due to the lack of physiotherapists in Malawi, her presence will make a real difference in the lives of others: “Many diseases in our country leave people with some disabilities. However, in Malawi, if someone is not really working for a living, she or he is in trouble. If people cannot walk anymore, what can they do other than just sleeping and sitting all the day for the rest of their lives? It is here that the physiotherapy profession comes in to improve their living standards, so that at least they should be able to do some things to sustain their lives”.