Anti-Corruption Commission, ACC has unravelled potential corruption hotspots in the free healthcare delivery, a scheme conceived and implemented by the current government to cut down on the alarming rate of deaths among women and children.
A recent press release, issued at the end of an awareness raising exercise by the ACC partners like Health for All Coalition (HFAC), Anti-Corruption Civil Society Interactive Forum and the Media Alliance against Corruption in Lungi, confirmed there were huge challenges.
Although the host community agreed that the initiative was a laudable in ameliorating the suffering of pregnant women, lactating mothers and children under five but huge challenges to grapple with.
“Beneficiaries cannot access the free healthcare drugs all the time; the attitude of the nurses and other medical staff showing a lack of commitment, because the services provided are free; absenteeism of nurses in the Peripheral health units (PHU); and nurses levy charges on the free health care drugs and facilities, instead of offering them free. Above all, it was also observed that the government hospital in lungi has been without electricity for the past five months now,” the ACC statement said.
Apart from the challenges raised by the community people, Alhassan Bakarr Kamara, programme manager of HFAC, and Sampson Saidu, monitoring and compliance officer of the ACC who had been separately monitoring the dispensation of the free healthcare across the country, also highlighted their findings.
“The failure on the side of health workers to differentiate and account for the free health care drug separately, from that of the cost recovery drugs is one major problem, adding that the free health care initiative is an extension of the Cost recovery program which was meant to provide free medical treatment for the aged, school children and the very poor people who cannot afford medication. Only forty percent of the money spent on the purchase of drugs was to be collected from the sales of drugs, while the sixty percent goes to the beneficiaries,” the monitors reported.
Head of Public Education Unit at ACC, Koloneh Sankoh said the Commission frowns at any such unfortunate intentions. She noted that man by nature was selfish but advised those in the habit of selling the free healthcare drugs to desist from such.
She encouraged community people to speak out against corruption, noting that the culture of silence would do this country no good.
President Ernest Koroma launched on 27 April the free healthcare service to abolish health care user fees reportedly cost US$90 million and was expected to cover 230,000 pregnant women and around one million children under five in 2010 alone.
Mothers and children were supposed to access a package of medical care that included all treatment and medicines at no cost, ensuring minimal essential care for all.
According to Amnesty International, a global movement for human rights, in a report published last year, the move “constituted a leap forward for a country with some of the worst maternal and child mortality rates in the world.”
However, it said: “the launch of free care was rushed and ill-prepared. Requisition and distribution systems were inadequate, monitoring and accountability mechanisms were largely absent, so many women and children still had to pay for some or all medicines.
Many factors that contribute to maternal mortality remained unaddressed, such as unsafe abortions, female genital mutilation, early marriage and the lack of sexual and reproductive education.”
