Sierra Leone News

The continuing spread of the Wild Polio Virus in West African remains a threat to the interruption of WPV transmission mid 2010. In an effort to respond to this situation, WHO Regional Office for Africa working with partners proposed three rounds of National Immunization Days (NIDs) within the region.

With completion of the country compact, the Ministry of Health and Sani-tation (MoHS) initiated a process to develop the first Joint Programme of Work and Funding (JPWF), a three-year shared health sector plan. The plan provides a comprehensive framework for aligning interventions to sector priorities and links the long-term policies and development strate-gies as defined in the National Health Sector Strategic Plan with the An-nual Operational Plan (AoP).

WHO donates 1 Ambulance, 4 Vehicles, Blood Banks, Refrigerators, Laboratory Equipments, Teaching AIDS, Motor Bikes and other supplies to Ministry of Health and Sanitation

The Ministry of Health and Sanitation (MoHS) with technical and financial support of WHO and other partners on Thursday 27 October 2011 commenced a two day stakeholders meeting to validate Integrated National Waste Management Policy (INWMP) and Integrated National Waste Management Strategic Plan (INWMSP) for Sierra Leone developed as part of the implementation of the National Health Sector Strategic Plan 2010-2015 and government’s “Agenda for Change”.

The Ministry of Health and Sanitation held a stakeholders meeting to finalize a draft Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Plan for the health sector. The plan is being developed by the ministry in collaboration with its health development partners to measure progress towards achieving objectives of the National Health Sector Strategic Plan (NHSSP).

The Ministry of Health and Sanitation has launched a survey report in Free-town that established high prevalence of risk factors for Non-Communicable Diseases (NCD) in Sierra Leone. The STEPwise survey, is a WHO standard-ized methods for collecting, analyzing and disseminating data on NCDs sur-veillances and was conducted in November 2009. The World Health Organisa-tion provided technical and financial support for conducting the survey.

In this Issue

1. National Health Sector review
2. Independent Monitoring of National Immunization Days
3. WHO supports Blue Trunk Library in Sierra Leone

The National Health Sector Strategic Plan (NHSSP) of the Ministry of Health and Sanitation 2010 – 2015 serves as a guide in strengthening the health system in the country.

The Ministry of Health and Sanitation on Tuesday 20th July launched the start of a four day national Influenza A H1N1 immunisation campaign. The vaccination campaign will target about 600,000 people including health workers, pregnant women and children age 6-12 months and per-sons with chronic disease conditions.

The Ministry of Health and Sanitation (MoHS) completed a three day training workshop for the National Rapid Response Team members in Freetown from December 6-8, 2011. The training is part of MOHS’s efforts to strengthen the Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR) programme in the country.

The world Health Organisation Country Office in Sierra Leone has donated several assorted medical supplies and essential items worth USD 160,000 to the Ministry of Health and Sanitation.

The items included anthropometric tools to be used to strengthen nutrition surveillance, life saving protocols and guidelines to improve obstetric care, drugs for integrated treatment of NTDs, motor bikes to strengthen mobility of supervisors to enhance immunization programme and computers with accessories to improve data management capacity.