By Saio Marrah
Sierra Leone’s Vice President, Mohamed Juldeh Jalloh PhD has admitted that despite the improvement in healthcare in the country, its pocket expenditure is still very high and stands at 34 USD per individual.
Dr. Jalloh was addressing a high-level delegation from the World Health Organisation (WHO) during his keynote address and launch of the Universal Health Preparedness Review (UHPR), held at the Freetown International Conference Centre on Wednesday 3rd May 2023.
The Vice President said as a government they hope to scale down such spending by working with the private sector involved in healthcare services.
He said without working with the private sector, out-of-pocket expenditure on healthcare will grow, the reason he said the government has created a new platform for those who want to do business by providing private health facilities and those that want to support government efforts through the construction of healthcare centres in communities.
He added that the current focus of the country is providing high healthcare delivery for the entire population, which is the vision of President Julius Maada Bio, according to the VP.
He spoke of Sierra Leone’s wealth of experience in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic and the Ebola epidemic.
Dr. Jalloh said the country was able to build from that experience an architecture that will support a resilient and robust healthcare system.
To show the country’s pro-activeness in emergencies, he narrated how as a country that spends about 520 million dollars every year on food importation from large-scale economies that were also affected by the pandemic, the government keeps the stock level of food in the country, created a special economic package to support businesses for more food importation.
This was because he said the government did not know when the pandemic would end.
He said Sierra Leone’s experience clearly showed that with preparedness it is predicted the country will have an effective and robust healthcare delivery system.
The Vice President also informed the high-level delegation that COVID-19 showed that no country is fully prepared for the pandemic.
“We must strengthen and make our health systems more resilient while promoting universal health coverage. Equally, it has taught us that we must create a platform for shared engagement and accountability among countries,” he said.
In his statement, the Minister of Health and Sanitation, Dr. Austin Demby said the low infection and mortality rate from COVID-19 was a deliberate action by the government based on the proactive measures put in place from the experience it had gained from past emergencies.
He also talked about the stages of life, from pregnancy, birth, baby to childhood and adulthood and then old age, all of which he said require proper healthcare, which he said the Government is focused on achieving.
The Executive Director of WHO headquarters, Dr. Mike Ryan thanked the nurses for being front-line workers in the absence of doctors in local community health centres and said the UHPR is an opportunity for Sierra Leoneans and institutions to come together and reflect on what the gaps are, take responsibility and acknowledge the weaknesses and be ready to fix things up.
He said global health security exists for nations to have health security for their people and that if WHO and other bodies can work together to connect with the strength of countries, then there will be global health security, which he stressed cannot be achieved without national ownership.
Copyright © 2023 Politico (05/05/23)
