Medical Mission Trip to Malawi

Four nurses from St. Luke’s Allentown Campus left their homes, families and workplace last month to volunteer 8,000 miles away as caregivers in the African country of Malawi.

Led by Kathleen Grant, RN, ICU manager, the group also included Lisa Reph, RN, ICU; Gisele Commins, RN, ICU nurse educator; and Emily Steward, RN, infection prevention.

In addition to their personal luggage, they took 14 50-pound suitcases filled with medical supplies, medications, shoes and toothbrushes. Malawi, located in Southeast Africa with a population of 21,600,000, is one of the world’s poorest countries. People there live on about $2 a day, many relying on subsistence farming and fishing.

The group of St. Luke’s nurses arrived in Malawi on March 12 after 30 arduous hours of air and overland travel. They immediately purchased medications at the local pharmacy for treating malaria, HIV/AIDS, infections and other ailments. Next, they set up pop-up clinics in vacant buildings in Zomba, the country’s former capital, and two nearby villages.

During their nearly two weeks there, they treated more than 7,300 patients—mostly women and children—alongside local and other volunteer doctors and nurses. It’s not unusual for patients to walk several hours through the forests and fields to a clinic, explained Grant. Each morning, a line of hundreds of women and kids waited outside the clinics in hope of receiving treatment. Following an eight-hour day of diagnosing illness and providing care, St. Luke’s team reviewed the data they collected, discussed the cases they treated and prepared for the next day’s patients.

“We took care of some of the poorest people on earth,” said Grant, who has made several mission trips to the Third World since 2005. They treated the sickest patients first and sent those critically ill by the region’s sole ambulance to the regional hospital in Zomba.

They treated malaria, skin infections, dysentery, HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancy-related complications, skin wounds and abscesses and other conditions rarely seen in the U.S. The team also provided dental, vision and foot care.

They educated the patients on healthy behaviors in hopes of avoiding repeat illnesses. Though many conditions are easily prevented or treated in the developed world, they’re common in Malawi.

Each nurse used vacation time and paid for her own travel, lodging and vaccination expenses to make the trip. They collaborated with local members of Villages and Partnerships, a non-profit, faith-based organization located in New Jersey which has served in Malawi since early in the 2000’s. 

To raise funds for the trip, Grant and her colleagues held fundraisers at St. Anne’s School in Bethlehem, which Grant’s children attend, Union Evangelical Lutheran Church in Schnecksville and others in their local communities, through family and friends and at St. Luke’s Allentown Campus. On average, each nurse spent $1,500 of her own money for the trip.

While this was Grant’s second mission trip to Malawi, and her sixth overall to India, Africa and Costa Rica, she said she continues to be struck by poverty and disease there. But, she said, this is balanced by the sense of fulfillment and gratitude and deep religious faith apparent among their patients.

“Through a local translator,” Grant recalled, “a woman thanked us for our service said she hoped God would continue to bless us. The translator responded, ‘God is who sent us here.’

“That was a full-circle moment for us as to why we were there. … It’s why I went into nursing: to help people who are less fortunate than me.”