Thanzi la Onse (Health of All) from PICTURING HEALTH on Vimeo.

This is a film someone sent me about allocating resources in Malawi’s main hospital, and by extension, in all low resource settings. It’s interesting in itself but I think just the images are worth seeing if you’re from the West/North and have a Western/Northern image of a hospital. It’s not gruesome or graphic: it’s just striking how small and informal everything looks. Watch a bit more and you’ll get a flavor of both the shortages, and the way that allocation works – competition, persuasion, patching budgets together. It gives you a flavour of the sub-Saharan context of operation. The lack of basic equipment such as ventilators is of course shocking. (If you aren’t aware, the ICU unit is fundamentally built around the mechanical ventilator.) It’s eye-opening. You’ll see what I mean…