Ekwendeni College of Health Sciences (ECOHS) is one of the Christian Health Association of Malawi (CHAM) training colleges under the proprietorship of the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian (C.C.A.P), Synod of Livingstonia. It is located 25km from Mzuzu City, just a kilometer off the M1 road to Karonga in the Northern Region of Malawi.
The College has a long history of training health personnel. It was established in 1946 with a purpose of training Class III Midwives for Ekwendeni, Embangweni and David Gordon Memorial Hospitals and by then it was called a School of Midwifery. In 1961 it commenced the training of Class II Midwives alongside Class III Midwives taught in vernacular language. In 1971 Class III Midwives training was replaced by training enrolled midwives, a two-year course. Later 1991 the College started training Enrolled Nurses and Midwives and it was called Ekwendeni School of Nursing and Midwifery. In 2004 the College commenced a three-year Nursing and Midwifery Training Certificate program of which in 2006 was expanded to become a Diploma in Nursing and Midwifery Technician.
The College has grown rapidly from a total capacity of 206 in 2006 to 680 students in 2020. Towards the end of its first Strategic Plan, 2009 -2014, the college introduced three new programs: University Diploma in Nursing (Generic), Diploma in Clinical Medicine, and a Certificate in Community Midwifery Assistant. These new programs represented a major effort to achieve the College’s ambitious vision and goal through diversifying health training programmes to include higher level and clinical sciences programs.
The college, in its 2014 to 2019 Strategic Plans, included other new programs namely; Bachelors of Sciences in Nursing and Midwifery (BSc NM Generic), Diploma in Nursing and Midwifery (Upgrading), Public Health, Diploma in Medical Laboratory and Diploma in Pharmacy. Therefore, in an effort to meet its plan as stipulated in the 2014-2019 Strategic Plan hence the commencement of pharmacy assistant program in 2017 and Diploma in Nursing and Midwifery (Upgrading)in 2018.
Currently the college intake per year has doubled with each programme enrolling two cohorts in a year.
Comparatively, the faculty has also grown from the total of 8 lecturers in 2004 to a total of 43 lecturers in 2023. Their qualifications range from Masters Degree certificates to Bachelors level in all the departments of Nursing and Midwifery, Clinical Medicine and Pharmacy, the corporate staff has equally increased and it is headed by the College Registrar.
In its 2020-2024 strategic planning, the College has the ambition of introducing degree programmes which will be offered under the University of Livingstonia.
The College has made tremendous achievements as it was the first college in CHAM to upgrading Nurse Midwife Technicians (NMT) to Registered Nurse Midwife (RNM) using the eLearning mode of teaching and learning.