Kasungu, Malawi … It is a strange scene that is repeated over and over all across this nation of 15,000,000 people. The sick, the injured, the suffering, and the dying have little in the way of 
transportation, or mobility, with which to reach heath-care. Especially in the village areas there are few ways to transport the sick except walking, bicycling, carrying, or by ox cart. The same is true in one of the larger trading centers, the Kasungu Trading Center in the Central District of Malawi. Kasungu has a population of over 60,000 and is located 130 kilometers, or 81 miles) north of the capital city of Lilongwe. In spite of the fact it straddles highway M-1, the main highway through the country, this fact does little to help the people in the area that borders the trading center and the hospital. Small rural medical facilities dotting the region feed patients to this district hospital with the cases they cannot handle, and Kasungu District is often overwhelmed with patient needs. In spite of having a 179-bed government-funded district hospital, the situation is often dire with overcrowding, staff shortages, and a shortage of medicine and medical supplies. Add to this the extreme difficulty getting patients to, and into the facility, and then the problems associated with getting them from place to place inside the hospital.
In a recent “turning over” ceremony George Banda, the founder of Kuthandiza Osayenda Disability 
Outreach (KODO) delivered 4 wheelchairs to the medical facility for use by it’s patients. The Malawi Project and Free Wheelchair Mission of Irvine, California have worked together in recent years to deliver over 3,000 wheelchairs to Malawi for nationwide distribution. Banda and KODO is one of the recipients of wheelchairs that are then distributed nationwide to individuals who need assistance, as well as organizations such as this government hospital in Kasungu.
The Malawi Project focuses strongly on working through local organizations in order to assist them to strengthen local efforts to care for their people, and to help them establish local programs and organizations to carry out their work, and to solve local problems.