By: Sorie Ibrahim Fofanah
Minister of Health and Sanitation, Dr Austin Demby says $7 million is secure, waiting to be pumped into the establishment of a state-of-the-art diagnostic center at Kerry Town, just outside Waterloo.
In an interview with Politico, he said that amount had been ring-fenced by the Government of Sierra Leone with work due to start in due course for the center, which will also include a cancer treatment center. It will cost a total of $21 million and the minister assured of goodwill to get the job done.
He said that while the rest of the funds was being awaited from partners, a unit within the Macauley Street Hospital would soon be completed – in the next three months – for cancer interventions.
He said the Kerry Town Diagnostic Centre would be built on a 305-acre plot, with work on the perimeter fence to secure the land already underway. He emphasized that the project would also serve as a treatment center, complete with a screening center.
The minister said that equipment would be needed for the center as well as the physical infrastructure for radioisotope work hence there was the need for bunkers.
“We have done a lot of the leg work,” he said, adding that one of the machines they were thinking of was the Cobalt 16, which he warned needed to be replaced after every six years, as it would deteriorate after that time.
Another set of machine he spoke about and described as “a modern-day technology” was the Linear Accelerator. He emphasized that that was much more potent. However, he said they were debating on how to realise this.
Dr Demby said they were relying on the International Atomic Energy Agency (AIEA) for guidance, reiterating that “for now we are settling for both devices [the Lineal Accelerator and the Cobalt 16 machines] because each of them brings some advantages that the other does not have”.
He said they had created a new partnership with the US-based Varian with whom they had signed an MoU to cover a ten-year period.
“This MOU is a whole lot of a system of establishing a cancer center, starting with the training and the staffing complement and the staffing structure around it,’’ he said.
He spoke about the tender that had been put out before for the construction of the diagnostics center, but that there were challenges about inexperienced local contractors to build bunkers. He said that as a result, “we have to go back to the drawing board and resubmit this bid for broader international bid to get the best candidates that will help us to build this bunkers.”
Some Sierra Leonean medical students are currently studying abroad and will be back home soon upon completing their course to be able to help at the cancer facility center, Dr. Demby said. They will be actively involved in the setting-up of this institute”, he said, adding that the project might be completed in a year or two.
He assured that President Julius Maada Bio, who lost his mother to cancer, was passionate about delivering the center “for the people of Sierra Leone”.
Copyright © 2023 Politico (09/08/23)
