NONM DISSATISFIED WITH MEDIA

NONM DISSATISFIED WITH MEDIA

By Frank Kauteka Tembo

National Organization of Nurses and Midwives of Malawi (NONM) has expressed sadness with some media practitioners who always concentrate on negative issues about nurses and midwives in the country.

NONM President Jonathan Gama told Voice of Kanyawazi that media practitioners in the country concentrates much on reporting negative side of minority of nurses and midwives who misbehave a development that portrays all nurses and midwives as nasty professionals.

“We [NONM] are not happy that some media guys they actually always portrays stories of bad about nursing and midwife profession. 

There are a lot of good issues that nurses and midwives do to the patients and clients so we [NONM] are saying indeed there might be some isolated incidence or some instances whereby nurses might actually abuse but you can see that nurses and midwives are doing good work to the patients, clients, and to the government of Malawi so please can you [media] applaud us for the good work we are doing.”

In addition Gama said the union meets resistance from top positions as they are regarded as the ones who spur violence among nurses and midwives in the country.

“As the union we meet some resistance from the top leadership, they feel that as a union we are instigating violence, strikes, we are doing something that is misleading nurses but we want to assure the Nurse leaders, Ministry of Health and government that we are there to give proper guidance in terms of disputes in terms of bargaining, the way we can co-exist between employer and employee.” He added.

Gama said NONM introduced a strategic plan in 2012 to phase out 2016 whereby the organization is supporting the nurses by providing counseling services and empowering hospital nurses at district level so that nurses and midwives should discus matters of patients’ abuse and come together so that those who are involved in misconduct should change.

Currently NONM is implementing Care of Cares project whereby nurses and midwives encourage each other to going for HIV test so that when one has been found with HIV should be given ARVs so that no one should die with HIV and AIDS at earlier stage but stay longer.

The organization has also introduced Information Communication Technology with the aim that most of the nurses should be computer illiterate so that they should access information in easier way in this technological era.