Freetown – An age-old social belief that “what goes on under the cloth should remain under the cloth” is killing women in Sierra Leone.
“People are dying in silence,” says Dr Desmond Maada Kangbai, the head of the country’s immunization services. He explains that most women affected by cervical cancer are not willing to talk about their condition or even present themselves for screening and thus possibly get a diagnosis early enough to change the course of the disease and their life.
Over 80 maternal and child health experts from around the world have concluded a meeting in Freetown aimed at improving midwifery education. The body of experts included health authorities of Sierra Leone, Malawi, Bolivia, Pakistan and Congo, WHO and other global health partners. Their deliberations focused on finding workable strategies that will help strengthen the quality of midwifery education and training to improve standards that will help curb preventable death of mothers and newborn babies.
Public health experts in Sierra Leone are meeting to review data of the past three months on trend of priority diseases in the country. Drawn from the technical and administrative levels from the national and districts in the country, as well as partners, the experts will monitor and evaluate the surveillance indicators and performance of three key components including disease surveillance, laboratory capacity and the immunization programmes for the period April to June of 2022.
The World Health Organization Country Office in Sierra Leone and the Ministry of Health and Sanitation have completed a 3-day quarterly meeting in Freetown to jointly review progress of the 2022-2023 Biennial Workplan implementation and initiated discussions for priorities setting for the next biennium 2024-2025.
Sierra Leone is now the newest of 38 countries in the WHO African region to have enacted a bill into law to protect its population against the harmful effects of tobacco and nicotine products. The Tobacco and Nicotine Control Act of 2022 was unanimously passed into law on 3 August 2022 by the country’s law makers
On 30 May 2022, WHO donated 900 oxygen cylinders with regulators and humidifiers to the Ministry of Health and Sanitation as a response to the need for oxygen in public health facilities across Sierra Leone. This is because the COVID-19 pandemic exposed gaps in the Sierra Leone health system's ability to respond adequately to patient needs, especially the provision of life-saving medical oxygen. Each of the cylinders been donated can hold 40 litres of oxygen. The total cost of the donation cost more than USD200 000.
Sierra Leone has completed public health risk profiling with aid of the Strategic Tool for Assessing Risk (STAR) and field testing of a new tool that will better position the country in terms of readiness to respond to the health consequences of disease outbreaks, as well as natural and man-made disasters.
“We’ve been at the forefront of the efforts to curtail this pandemic and we will continue to provide the best technical expertise to the government to effectively tackle COVID-19,” said Dr Steven V. Shongwe, WHO Representative in Sierra Leone. “At this stage of the pandemic, enhanced surveillance and strong laboratory capacity including genomics sequencing to detect emerging variants and improved vaccination coverage are among the critical support that WHO will continue to provide to keep the people safe”.
Sierra Leone has completed its annual health security capacity assessment and operational planning across various sectors aimed at strengthening implementation of the International Health Regulations (IHR) in the country. The assessments and planning were carried out through a series of multisector workshops on global health security which culminated in the compilation of the 2021 IHR Joint External Evaluation (JEE) Self-Assessment Scorecard and development of the 2022 National Action Plan for Health Security (NAPHS) Annual Operational Plan.
