Madonna’s charity opened a children’s surgery centre in Malawi. It now does 2,000+ operations a year

A children’s hospital unit set up by pop star Madonna’s charity in Malawi now carries out more than 2,000 life-saving operations every year. It gives high-level medical care at a free public hospital. The Mercy James Centre for Paediatric Surgery and Intensive Care is at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in Blantyre. It first opened in July 2017. The singer’s non-profit group, Raising Malawi, built it with the Malawian Ministry of Health. It is still the country’s first unit made just for children’s surgery. According to updates Raising Malawi posted on its official portal and news releases on Madonna’s website, the centre has grown its work to fill a huge gap in specialist children’s healthcare in the region. More than 50 per cent of Malawi’s 20 million people are under the age of 18. Safe surgery is vital to lower the number of children who die. The centre offers free surgery for complex conditions that children are born with, serious injuries, and children’s tumors. Raising Malawi has shared recent patient stories. They include four-year-old Trevor, who had a successful corrective cardiac thoracotomy (a heart operation), and four-month-old Success, who had surgery to remove a tum...