A legal-realist assessment of human rights, right to health and standards of healthcare in the Malawian prison system during COVID-19 state disaster measures.

Purpose: The first case of COVID-19 in the Malawi prison system was reported in July 2020. Human rights organisations raised concerns about the possibility of significant COVID-19 outbreaks and deaths in the prison system, because of the poor infrastructure, lack of healthcare and adequate COVID-19 mitigation measures, existing co-morbidities (tuberculosis, HIV and hepatitis C), malnutrition and poor health of many prisoners.

Design/methodology/approach: The authors conducted a legal-realist assessment of the Malawian prison system response to COVID-19 during state disaster measures, with a specific focus on the right to health and standards of healthcare as mandated in international, African and domestic law.

A multi-stakeholder situation assessment of COVID-19 disease preparedness and mitigation measures in a large prison complex in Malawi.

Purpose: Prisons in the sub-Saharan African region face unprecedented challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. In Malawi, the first prison system case of COVID-19 was notified in July 2020. While prison settings were included in the second domestic COVID-19 response plan within the Law Enforcement cluster (National COVID-19 preparedness and response plan, July-December 2020), they were initially not included in the K157bn (US$210m) COVID-19 fund.

Qualitative evaluation of paediatric burn injury in Malawi: assessing opportunities for injury prevention.

Introduction: The burden of burn injury in sub-Saharan Africa is high and children bare a disproportional share of the injury burden.

Methods: This is a prospective qualitative study of paediatric burn survivors (age, ≤8 years) admitted to Kamuzu Central Hospital (KCH) in Lilongwe, Malawi.

Results: There were a total of 72 guardians interviewed for the purpose of the study.