Sierra Leone — News

28 February 2020 | Universal Health Coverage Health Promotion Adolescent Health Child health

Making school environment healthy and conducive for learning in Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone has commenced the process of developing a National School Health Policy and Strategy to create a safe, healthy school environment for learning with the aim to improve social inclusion and sustainable human capital development. The process is being coordinated by an interministerial core group led by the Ministry of Health and Sanitation. The World Health Organization in collaboration with other United Nations agencies are providing strategic technical assistance to the government for the development of these national documents with funding from the British Government through DFID.

25 February 2020 | Maternal Health

Improving national and district capacity to tackle maternal mortality in Sierra Leone

Maternal mortality remains a major concern in Sierra Leone. Recent statistics show that maternal mortality accounts for 36 percent of all deaths among women age 15-49 in the country. This makes Sierra Leone one of the countries in the world with the highest life-time risk of women dying at pregnancy or childbirth.

9 December 2019 | International Health Regulations Integrated Disease Surveillance

Sierra Leone Adapts new WHO guidelines for improved disease surveillance for the Africa region

Sierra Leone has adapted the third edition of the Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR) technical guidelines 2019. The new guidelines were released by the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Africa in August this year to incorporate recent recommendations by expert panels on strengthening the International Health Regulations (IHR 2005) and global health security. Adaptation of the guidelines is a way of aligning Sierra Leone’s public health security needs and priorities with current technologies, information, tools and materials taking into consideration new trends and developments such as evidence on important diseases, conditions and events in the world.

3 December 2019 | International Health Regulations

Sierra Leone concludes mandatory International Health Regulation annual reporting for 2019

Sierra Leone has completed its 2019 self-evaluation to determine the country’s health security capacities as required by the International Health Regulations (IHR 2005). A comprehensive multi-sectoral approach was used to fill the mandatory IHR State Party Self-Assessment Annual Reporting (SPAR) tool. The SPAR obliges countries to report annually to the World Health Assembly on their progress and compliance with implementation of the IHR requirements.

18 September 2019

PHOTO STORY on how the leadership of Sierra Leone demonstrated high level commitment and ownership at the launch of the National Action Plan for Health Security

On 12 September, Sierra Leone launched its National Action Plan for Health Security (NAPHS), making it the seventh country in the WHO African region to develop and officially launch the Plan. The comprehensive five-year …

12 September 2019

Sierra Leone launches a comprehensive five-year National Action Plan for Health Security in compliance with International Health Regulations.

Sierra Leone launches a comprehensive five-year National Action Plan for Health Security in compliance with International Health Regulations. Freetown, 12 September 2019 – Sierra Leone is now the seventh country in t…

14 July 2019

Sierra Leone prepares to pioneer pre-service and in-service courses in Disease Surveillance and the International Health Regulations in Africa

Sierra Leone is on track to become a model in Africa to meet the challenge of health emergency response by preparing its health workforce to detect, prevent, control and effectively respond to public health emergencies in the country.

6 June 2019

Sierra Leone leads the way in Africa with fully functional electronic disease surveillance system

Freetown – 6 June 2019: Sierra Leone has become the first country in Africa to fully transform its national disease surveillance system from paper-based to web-based electronic platform. As from today, electronic reporting of disease surveillance data is active in all public health facilities. The process, which was first piloted in just one district in 2016, was successfully rolled out to all the 14 districts and every government health facility countrywide.