By Mabinty Kamara
More than sixty patients admitted at the Connaught Hospitalin central Freetown, including nurses, have received food items from a local humanitarian organisation known as Freedom to Feed the Needy.
The charity based mainly in Freetown has a goal to provide for the needy in the country regardless of race, colour or sex.
The food was provided for wards 1 and 2, the latter being children’s ward. Patients and nurses in the two wards appreciated the move made by the organization to remember those who are sick in the hospital.
The move to donate food to patients and staff of the hospital came about when the executive director of the organisation, Gibril Sesay, saw firsthand the suffering of the patients when he visited his sick father who was admitted there.
Sesay said, during the donation, that his organisation was “self-sponsored” and that whatever financial venture they took had come directly from the organisation’s fund.
“We do it in the name of God,” he said. Sesay further assured the hospital staff and patients that the next feeding project would cater for the entire hospital as well as hospitals across the country.
While registering appreciation for the gesture, the matron of Connaught hospital, Isatu Kamara, said although government provided meal three times daily for patients, it was necessary for “well meaning” Sierra Leoneans to provide for their fellow Sierra Leoneans.
Donors, she said, could not be stopped from providing food to patients because government was providing for them, noting that feeding people was part of the Sierra Leonean culture.
Mariama Sesay, a patient at ward one, complained that although they were provided with food, it was sometimes “not sweet.” “Since we have problem of appetite as patients, we don’t have appetite for such food,” Mrs Sesay said. “Having different kinds of food from other people makes it possible for patients to choose what to eat,” she said.
(C) Politico 09/03/16
