The Lion Heart Medical Center (LHMC) is a hospital in Yele in the rural district of Tonkolili in the Northern Province of Sierra Leone. The Country Director, Gibrilla Jalloh, said, “The LHMC also generates income from patients. This more or less covers the wages for the national staff…” Adding that 60% of patients’ fees are subsidized.
“LHMC developed from a small first aid clinic in 2010 into a general hospital with 70 beds and 60 employees in 2018,” he pointed out. He said LHMC now comprises an Outpatient Clinic, an Inpatient clinic, for children and adults, an operating theatre, a separate X-ray department, laboratory facility, a maternity ward and a newly built isolation ward. The hospital has approximately 70 beds.
The staff consist of a Medical Superintendent (MSI), a Hospital Administrator (HA), a medical officer (all expats), three clinical health officers, four state enrolled registered nurses, an accountant, a cashier, a facility manager and approximately 50 others such as nursing aides, drivers, cleaners, etc., all locals.
The LHMC is self-sufficient with water from solar driven water well and for its electricity from a large solar park.
One of the doctors said it is no mistake that the hospital was built at Yele, which is the centre of Sierra Leone as this is to actualize government’s decentralization drive.
The INGO Lion Heart Foundation in Sierra Leone is a subsidiary of the Lion Heart Foundation (LHF) in the Netherlands. Since its establishment in 2010, the hospital has been funding its operations with external funding from Netherlands.
There are over 100 Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) operating in the health care sector in Sierra Leone.
The Ministry of Health and Sanitation is responsible for organizing health care and after the end of the civil war the Ministry changed to a decentralized structure of health provision to try to increase its coverage.
Lion Heart Foundation Country Director, Gibrilla Jalloh, said that for the hospital to be sustainable there is a need for government intervention to take ownership of the facility.
OG/16/4/18
By Ophaniel Gooding
Wednesday April 18, 2018.
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