By Mc Donald Chapalapata, a Contributor
K Motors, a newly formed panel beating company in Blantyre is in a project of fixing ‘dead’ hospital ambulances across the country as part of its corporate social responsibility.
K Motors Managing Director Mansoor Karim said they are geared to be fixing one ambulance every month for the next 12 months.
He said all the hospitals need to do is send pictures of the Ambulances to their Facebook page and they will make arrangements to get the Ambulances to their garage in Blantyre and fix them.
“We are fixing the ambulance even those with engine problems and have been abandoned for a long time,” said Karim.
Karim said they got two ambulances from Chikwawa District Hospital and they have already fixed one ambulance which they will be handing over to the hospital at the end of this month.
“We are aware of the huge resources challenges facing our public hospitals in terms of servicing and fixing ambulances and this has led to a number of them being grounded. We pledged that we will be fixing one ambulance every month for free as part of us giving back to the community,” said Karim.
He said one of the two ambulances that were taken from Chikwawa last month has been fixed and will be delivered to Chikwawa District Hospital at the end of this month.
“We are a fairly new company and we thought this is the little we can do to help our communities. We are also grateful for the support that we get from insurance companies like Liberty Insurance, UGI, Britam and NICO for a new company like ours,” said Karim.
Chikwawa District Health Officer Dr Stalin Zinkanda thanked K Motors saying the rehabilitation of the two ambulances will help the district reach out to almost 100,000 patients.
“We are excited that K Motors will fix two ambulances for us for free, this is good news. About 10 months ago, we only had one running ambulance until government gave us five new ambulances.”
“Chikwawa District has a population of 601,000 people and the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that one ambulance serves up to 50,000 people and this means that ideally we are supposed to have 12 functioning ambulances but we only have 6 ambulances running now. So the two ambulances will help us a lot,” said Dr Zinkanda.
He said there are 28 Health Centres in the district with some in hard to reach areas thereby affecting health service delivery.
“We are going to allocate the two ambulances to these far away health centres so that it is easy for them to bring patients to the District Hospital or indeed to the referral hospital in Blantyre. Chikwawa District Council is very thankful to K Motors for this gesture,” said Dr Zinkanda.
