The Minister of Health and Sanitation, Dr. Alpha Tejan Wurie has said at the 70th World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland that steps have been initiated in Sierra Leone towards meeting the Universal Health Coverage through a Joint External Evaluation (JEE) to assess the current National Preparedness for Disease Outbreak in the country.
Delivering his statement at the global event, Dr. Alpha Tejan Wurie informed that strategies have been put in place to address the identified gaps towards meeting the universal health coverage, adding that all persons in every community should be able to access preventive, curative rehabilitative and palliative Health Services of sufficient quality whilst ensuring that the use of these services does not expose them to Financial Hardship.
He said that the country had earlier gone through ten years of civil war in the nineties, got exposed to the worse Ebola epidemic in history and a devastating mudslide episode in August 2017.
These three events, according to the Minister of Health and Sanitation, continue to “suppress the economic growth of our country which hinders our outreach to deliver” Universal Health Services.
He maintained that as a nation three concrete steps have been initiated towards the Universal Health Coverage (UHC) which he said includes the Free Health Care initiative that targets pregnant women, lactating mothers and children under five.
This program, he went on, has now been expanded to other vulnerable groups such as amputees as a consequence of the civil war and Survivors of Ebola scourge to access Free Medical Care.
He disclosed that in September this year, the program will be expanded to include all school children “as we continue to address the challenges and the high-out-of-pocket expenditure for health services in 2017 for which the Government of Sierra Leone enacted the Social Health Insurance Scheme” with necessary structures being put in place to start its implementation.
The Minister of Health and Sanitation thanked the country’s International Partners including the World Health Organization, World Bank and Global Fund, and advocated to re-align the existing projects to provide the requisite infrastructure and equipment as well as encouragement.
The Sierra Leone delegation to the World Health Organization headed by the Minister of Health and Sanitation Dr. Alpha Tejan Wurie included the Technical Team at the Health Ministry: Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Brima Kargbo; Director of Policy Planning and Information; Dr. Samuel A. Kargbo, the Director of Food and Nutrition; Madam Aminata Shamit Koroma and the Deputy Chief Nursing and Midwifery Officer One, Matron Mary Fullah.