Especially since it became a republic in 1971,Sierra Leone might not have witnessed some direct adverse situational effectsof this proportion on the public-private sector economic symbiosis as evident in the way the health sector operates in particular and the country in general.
Democracy means normalcy to a large extent, and so it comes with sustainable development and economic stability.Two weeks ago president of the African Development Bank, Donald Kaberuka, warned that “The Ebola epidemic is not just a public health crisis, but an economic crisis...affecting many sectors of activity”.
Our Concern
When it first emerged in late May this year, way in the eastern provincial towns of Kailahun and Kenema, the government thought the outbreak would be limited to a health crisis of provincial character and susceptibility. And then there was the rhetoric of being of top of the situation. Soon, it took the health system, the state machinery and the entire nation off guard. Then the obstinate viral tendency of the haemorrhagic deadly fever manifested itself in full scale. That is a reason we see an extemporary diversion of policy effort from other sectors, in particular the economy. Ultimately the private sector of the economy is affected a great deal while the citizens, most of them very poor and at the receiving end, are the hardest hit.
Then it becomes our beat here at Biz & Eco. For the purpose of clarity a beat reporting, also known as specialized reporting, is a genre of journalism that can be described as the craft of in-depth reporting on a particular issue, sector, organization or institution over time. Beat reporters build up a base of knowledge on and gain familiarity with the topic, allowing them to provide insight and commentary in addition to reporting straight facts.
The Diversion
When state house released its announcement of a public state of emergency, effectively limiting movements and gathering to a large extent or even restricting them by law, usually a general belief might be that the government was never going to scale up support for the health emergency at the expense of the generality of the sector and the economy. My suspicions, and they might be true, are that the inimitable Ebola has and continues to take away attention and support from other communicable and non-communicable diseases, thereby increasing mortality from such killer illnesses as malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, cholera and Lassa fever. The last two are as serious, contagious and lethal as Ebola is. In fact a medical director in one of the multinational companies tells me that cholera is probably the most infectious of viral attacks or communicable diseases that we have in Sierra Leone.
As for non-communicable disease a 2014 report by The Economist, an online publication with insights that bring invaluable analysis and opinion on business critical information, “chronic, non-communicable diseases will claim more lives in sub-Saharan Africa than will infectious diseases by 2030”.Generally the statistics are grimmer. The World Health Organisation and the US Centres for Disease find out that between December 2013 and August 11, 2014 in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, most affected by Ebola in West Africa, some 110 people die every day of Tuberculosis; 404 of Diarrhoea/Cholera; 552 of Malaria and 685 of HIV/AIDS. Sierra Leone in 2012 recorded between 224 and 392 cholera related deaths under eight months. At the launch of government’s non-communicable disease policy and strategic plan in September 2013 Dr. Pamela Mitula, who headed the expanded programme on immunisation of WHO in the country, warned that “Sierra Leone is beginning to see a trend where citizens are facing the twin burdens of communicable and non-communicable diseases”.
Those warnings from health and economic experts were not heeded. Meanwhile, whether inadvertently or not, the government seems to have forgotten about the economy – the private sector I mean – because of the ever surging consequence of the Ebola disease. Now we are fast facing an economic crisis as a direct result of a general deterioration of services in the health sector.
Burden on the economy
Restrained by public health emergency, the first major move since the outbreak of the Ebola Virus Disease, and justifiably so, the country’s economy has lived to bear the brunt of certain inertia owing to the obvious diversion of attention from its private sector economics. I am not sure of any immediate assurance of stability. What happens is that the public-private sector relationship is taking a toll on private businesses because the public sector failed in its obligations. What we see now is that while those public health emergency decisions were made, certainly without due recourse to their concomitant economic impact on the private citizens, the largest sector of the economy is being abandoned.
Let me take some time off to establish the relationship between the public sector and the private sector in Sierra Leone so that we all get along in appreciating the fact that what we have always had was a public sector. Once it flops, almost everything drops. That is the reason for the current state of affairs and how and why we got here. But also important to know is what this means for a weak economy awaits a critical save.
The private sector is that part of the economy, sometimes referred to as the citizen sector, which is run by private individuals or groups, usually as a means of enterprise for profit, and is not controlled by the state [at all].In most free-market economies, the private sector is the sector where most jobs are held. The public sector, on the other hand, refers to the economy concerned with providing various government services. These definitions, albeit their universal appeal, do not hold true in Freetown. The consequences are what the country grapples with today. Almost all private health facilities are closed and public health centres cannot withstand the pressure. Even those workers whose wages were low dared to see a private physician because the public sector failed long ago.
The economic reality
And now Guinea has deployed its forces along the border and closed its frontiers with Liberia and Sierra Leone. Now there are food shortages across the country, making it very difficult to people to cope.
Go to markets across the country and you will realise that supplies of staple commodities such as rice and cassava and other condiments exclusive to suppliers from Kabala, for example, are already dwindling in Freetown.
(C) Politico 28/08/14
