The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has engaged health workers in Makeni in the form of a sensitization meeting at its Makeni Office.
ACC Regional Manager, North, Patrick Sandi said in his welcome address that the engagement was an educational and preventive drive aimed at addressing corruption issues in a bid to ensure effective and transparent health care service delivery.
He reminded the health workers of their primary duty of saving lives and how corrupt practices could hinder the success of the Free Health Care programme and the improvement of health delivery system in Sierra Leone. Sandi said it was the aim of the Commission to ensure that the Free Health Care Programme was free from corruption and other hindrances.
ACC Director of Public Education and Outreach, Shollay Davies said the health sector was one of the benchmarks in the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) adding that if Sierra Leone was to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015, there was need to ensure the timely and effective delivery of health care services.
He said the Free Health Care Programme was very crucial to the ACC and for that reason, it was putting monitoring mechanisms in place to ensure its success. Davies said no matter what government did in terms of drugs supply and distribution, the Free Health Care programme would be unsuccessful if they did not go the right way.
ACC Prosecutor, Abdul Rahman Mansaray explained some of the offences in the 2008 Anti-Corruption Act and warned the nurses to stop asking for money from beneficiaries of the Free Health Care programme before administering treatment to them. He warned them to deliver service in conformity with the law.
In response, the health workers highlighted various challenges in the implementation of the Free Health Care programme such as frequent shortage of drugs, late distribution of the drugs, misuse of drugs by patients, shortage of staff, and stakeholder participation and commitment. They called for sufficient human resource, logistics in terms of drugs, transportation and electricity.
