By Mustapha Sesay
The World Bank has approved over US$ 45 million as loan for two projects aimed at supporting and strengthening service delivery in Sierra Leone’s health sector.
The projects will be co-financed by the World Bank and the International Development Association with the Bank providing the biggest chunk under a credit agreement with the government of Sierra Leone.
The projects will look at challenges that had weakened the health sector before and after the devastating Ebola outbreak in the country in 2014 - 2015.
“The project will help to address the immediate aftermath of the Ebola epidemic and aim to strengthen the health system and improve health outcomes which are currently worse than in countries with comparable socio-economic characteristic and health spending,” Henry Kerali, the World Bank Country Director said in a press statement.
The priority of the projects will be on increased utilisation and improved quality of essential maternal child health services which have taken a knock over the years.
According to the Bank the project will detail financial and non-financial incentives to 5,000 community health workers in hard-to-reach areas across the country and that it will also look at empowering the ability of district hospitals and primary health units to deliver high impact services through the deployment of foreign medical experts to work alongside local experts to build the capacity of health workers in remote parts of the country.
“This project will directly support the rebuilding of the government health system from the bottom up”, according to World Bank country manager, Parminder Brar, adding: “Working with and through government institutions it will help build a robust health care system that is resilient and strengthened toward emergencies and recurring tropical diseases, thus contributing to reducing maternal new born and child mortality and mobility”.
He explained that the other project would focus on national and regional cross-sectoral capacity for collaborative disease surveillance and preparedness within the sub-region to prevent such outbreaks as Ebola.
“The project will support Sierra Leone in strengthening its human and animal laboratory capacity, strengthen surveillance and information systems improve preparedness and emergency response and human resource management” he went on, and that it would “greatly strengthen institutional capacity and provide the funding for effective linkage with local communities to identify and control the disease burden.”
Brar noted that there had been a lot of emphasis on human health without any adequate care for animal health, which he said account for more than one third of the global communicable disease burden. He said currently there was only one specialised veterinary medical doctor to handle animal welfare in terms of medical care and that there was need to strengthen and build human capacity in the area of animal treatment so that diseases that are transferred from animal to human could be detected early and treated.
Minister of health, Dr. Abu-Bakarr Fofanah expressed appreciation to the Bank for their “continuous commitment in transforming the country’s health sector”. Speaking at a press conference at the Bank’s head office in Freetown, he said their intervention had been informed by mutual respect for the core values of both parties.
Dr. Fofana said that before the Ebola outbreak, the Bank was already supporting the health sector with multimillion dollar projects in the area of reproductive and child health, and that they were also able to provide incentives for health care workers in performance-based financing.
“When the EVD struck, the bank was very flexible and quick to reprogram funds from this project to support the response. Hence the first source of external funding for the response came from the World Bank.” Dr. Fofana said.
He noted that two new projects were capable of preventing, detecting and responding to health emergencies, hence will drastically reduce maternal and
child deaths.
(C) Politico 30/06/16
