By Mathew Kanu in Makeni
A local council authority in Sella Limba chiefdom says the headquarter town of Kamakwie has never benefitted from the government’s free health care for pregnant women, breastfeeding mothers and children under five years. Councillor Foday Amara Yansaneh of Ward III said that because the Kamakwe Wesleyan Hospital, the only health facility serving that chiefdom and its environs, was not benefiting from the free health care, services were very expensive. “This requires serious attention by the ministry of health and sanitation” he said, adding that compounding the situation was that “the majority of the people in the chiefdom are subsistence farmers who only depend on the agricultural goods to survive and therefore cannot afford expensive health service”. “We have brought these concerns to the district health management team on several occasions but our calls have fallen on deaf ears,” he lamented. He said the Holy Spirit Catholic Hospital in Makeni, the Magbenteh Community Hospital in Makeni, the St. John of God Catholic Hospital and the Kamakwe Wesleyan Hospital were all private health care providers that were not benefiting from the health policy. A carpenter, Abdul Kamara, said he had to pay Le 500,000 to save the life of her relative. A women’s leader, Fatmata Bangura, told Politico that government did not care about them and that they had been neglected for long in the Sella Limba chiefdom in general and Kamakwe in particular. “If they cannot build a hospital in Kamakwe, then they have to support the Wesleyan hospital in the town to administer the free healthcare drugs which are very expensive for us right now”. Madam Bangura said the ministry of health and sanitation should realize that women and children formed a bulk of the population of the chiefdom and that they too were Sierra Leoneans. But the director of healthcare department at the Wesleyan Hospital, Brimah Samura, said the facilities were in bad shape. He said “patients cannot pay their medical bills and the hospital depends on those medical bills to buy drugs for women and children” as a result of which he said the drugs were very expensive. Mr. Samura said that if government supported the hospital they would administer free treatment for children under five, pregnant and breastfeeding mothers. “The politicians are not treating this problem seriously” he chided, adding “The people seriously need the free healthcare”. Meanwhile, Chairman of the Bombali District Council, John Shangai Koroma, has assured that he will prevail on the district health management team to build more peripheral health units to ease the burden of the hospital in Kamakwe. “I am aware of the problems but it will take time to solve them and we will do all we can as a council to ensure that the people benefit from the free healthcare,” he promised. © 7 August 2013
