Sierra Leone News

A sub-national polio immunization campaign starts today in Sierra Leone to protect an estimated 520,000 children under five years of age using the novel Oral Polio vaccine. The campaign will run for four days and will be implemented by national and district teams and frontline health workers that will go house to house in three districts - Tonkolili, Western Area Urban and Western Area Rural districts - to immunize eligible children.

With improved supplies of COVID-19 vaccines, Sierra Leone has commenced intensified vaccination exercise to bolster protection among its eligible population against the disease.

Ebola booster dose vaccination kicks off in Sierra Leone following administration of the prime dose of the Johnson & Johnson Ebola vaccine in May this year. Frontline health workers, traditional healers and commercial motor bike riders who received the first dose are now being given their second jab to maximise their protection against the disease. The target beneficiaries were identified as high-risk groups and selected for preventive vaccination to protect them in the event there was a cross border transmission of the disease which had re-emerged in Guinea in February 2021.

Freetown, July 30, 2021 – Today, the World Health Organization Country Office in Sierra Leone formally handed over to the Ministry of Health and Sanitation a consignment of assorted laboratory equipment and commodities for safe blood services worth $133,000 to help bolster laboratory capacity for safe blood services in the country.

Sierra Leone has today received the second batch of 96,000 doses of the AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID-19 vaccine donated by France and delivered by UNICEF through the COVAX Facility, a partnership between the Government of Sierra Leone, CEPI, Gavi, UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO). This French donation to COVAX is a part of Team Europe’s broader effort to ensure equitable access to vaccines in lower- and middle-income countries.

Joint Press Release Freetown, 4th August 2021 - The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization, (WHO), welcome the milestone reached by the Government of Sierra Leone to adopt the Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes (BMS) Act 2021.

While the 2014–2016 deadly Ebola outbreak in West Africa devastated lives and wrecked health services, it also offered pivotal lessons in outbreak control by stoking swift and more effective response as well as driving progress in vaccines and therapeutics.

Freetown – While the 2014–2016 deadly Ebola outbreak in West Africa devastated lives and wrecked health services, it also offered pivotal lessons in outbreak control by stoking swift and more effective response as well as driving progress in vaccines and therapeutics.

Freetown, 11 May 2021 – Ebola vaccination kicked off today in Sierra Leone as the country takes proactive public health measures to protect people at high risk of infection in case of any potential cross-border transmission of the disease from the ongoing outbreak in neighbouring Guinea.

Freetown, 10 April 2021 – Sierra Leone today received the first batch of Ebola vaccines donated through the partnership between the World Health Organization (WHO) and the vaccine manufacturer Johnson & Johnson. A total of 30 000 regimen of the vaccines have been approved for Sierra Leone to protect people at high risk of the disease. Each regimen consists of two doses and would be given to the beneficiaries approximately eight weeks apart. The first consignment consists of 640 doses. Another consignment of 3 840 is expected to arrive in Freetown on 11 April. Subsequent consignments will be delivered during the period of the preventive vaccination.