By Mustapha Sesay
The African Youth and Children’s Network, AYCH-SL, has called on government to give more support to family members of deceased heath workers who lost their lives in the fight against the Ebola epidemic.
The latest call is one of many such advocacy efforts since the government, some nine months ago, promised to initiate a policy to give $5,000 to each family of health workers who died in the fight against the Ebola Virus Disease.
In February 2014, the government of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in Liberia promised and delivered on that. After October last year the families of every Guinean health worker who had died in the Ebola outbreak started receiving $10,000 as compensation packages, according to the government in Conakry.
This month the youth led advocacy group, AYCH-SL, intensified calls to have the government of Sierra Leone look after, especially children, affected by the disease that has caused a cumulative confirmed death of 3,585 as at August.
“Government should give priority in its post-Ebola recovery plan to children who lost both parents to Ebola and have no one to take care of them,” said Mohammed Koroma, the public relations officer, at this year’s commemoration of the World Humanitarian Day, August 19.
The day is observed in Freetown with the theme: “Support Health Workers, Survivors and their Families and say no to Stigmatization.”
Joanna Kargbo, from Save the Children, told the gathering at the Atlantic Hall, National Stadium in Freetown that AYCH-SL represented the voices of other children who didn’t have the opportunity to be heard.
She said her organization was also engaged in preventing children from sexual exploitation and ensuring that no child died from preventable diseases.
She insisted that health workers were key to achieving such a goal and that they needed to be protected and given improved working conditions in appreciation of their effort.
Anita Koroma, Country Director of the Girl Child Network, hoped that the government’s post-Ebola plan would be implemented in an accountable manner and that it would reach the intended beneficiaries.
“We are tired of NGOs making money at the expense of the very poor people they are supposed to help,” she lamented, and criticised the Anti-Corruption Commission for “compromising their work” and disregarding lack of accountability in the utilization of Ebola funds.
Ajibu Jalloh, deputy government spokesperson, said as a government they understood implementing the post-Ebola recovery plan would require collective engagement. He noted that it was good that youths had come together to educate the masses against stigmatization.
(C) Politico 25/08/15
