News

By Kemo Cham

The Ministry of Health and Sanitation (MoHS) has announced the commencement of mass recruitment of health workers with a view of enhancing the human resource base of an overstretched health sector.

The recruitment process is targeting volunteer health workers who served in the national Ebola response. Over 500 of them, from 11 districts, are being enlisted by the National Health Service Commission (NHSC) as Maternal and Child Health Assistants (MCHA), who were previously called Maternal and Child Health Aides.

By Mabinty Kamara

Dr Christian Bell, one of Sierra Leone’s very few trained gynecologists, has retired from public service. He announced his departure to private practice last month at the opening of a state of the earth private health facility – Aspen Medical International Sierra Leone.

Aspen Medical International is a US-owned healthcare provider. The Sierra Leone office, jointly owned by Bell, is its second branch in West Africa, after Aspen Medical in Liberia.

Mayor Saa Emerson Lamina

By Septimus Senessie in Kono

Kelvin Lewis, SLAJ Prexy

By Umaru Fofana

Senegalese president Macky Sall has announced an increase in the subvention given to the private media in his country, and thanked them for holding his government to account, and advancing “the country's digital presence”.

By Umaru Fofana

Cities and towns across Guinea have been brought to a standstill for the second day running after two labour unions called for a stay-at-home strike to protest the non-reduction in the pump price of fuel.

Both public and private sector workers have not gone to work and commercial vehicle drivers also heeded the call by the General Workers’ Union and the Confederation of Labour Unions who are demanding a reduction in the pump price from 8,000 Guinea Franc (a little over Le 5,000) per litre, to 5,000 GF (about Le 3,500).

The Paramount Chief of Mano Dasse Chiefdom in the southern Moyamba district has attributed the high rate of teenage pregnancy to the continued ban on "Bondo" the female circumcision initiation secret society.

Bondo is an established tradition in Sierra Leone through which women go through the rites of passage.

However,  at the height of the Ebola epidemic the government placed a temporary ban on the practice because it was seen as a source of transmission of the deadly virus.

President Ernest Bai Koroma on Tuesday officially presided over the re-opening of the Bintumani Hotel, one of Sierra Leone's prestigious hotels.

The ceremony comes after over a decade of refurbishment by the new management under a Chinese company called Beijing Urban Constructing Company (BUCG).