As Sierra Leone commemorates its first end of Ebola anniversary, Ministry of Health and Sanitation (MoHS), Deputy Minister I, Madina Rahman has said that the government has done a lot a year on after the outbreak.
“Although we’ve done much, however if we can go 10 years without any outbreak then I know we’ve done something,” she said.
Nevertheless, the Deputy Minister explained, “going forward I’m still advocating that we all still continue to practice the infection control measures, let’s make it part of us now as a way of moving forward. This would help us prevent ourselves from other adiseases.”
She added, “If you notice past rainy season we used to have cholera outbreaks it was like its part of us, but this rainy season there was not an outbreak because people were doing the same preventive and control measures washing their hands and maintaining hygienic practices they learnt during the Ebola outbreak.
Albeit the economic constraints the government is faced with the deputy minister said national economic challenge do not have a domino effect on the healthcare providers.
“Healthcare services are essential,” she said. Also maintaining “the survivors are getting all the care and support they are supposed to get.”
Notwithstanding, the challenges the deputy minister said, “the survivors are being treated. Over 3,000 have seen eye doctors. We are making sure we provide treatment for the conditions they are faced with, such as – anemia, insomnia, visual and auditory impairment,” she continued.
In order to give a clear understanding as to how government and partners work, the deputy minister said, “I would like to set the record straight, people are saying that our partners MSF and others are doing (the treatment) [and government is doing little or nothing], they are doing it on behalf of us they are our partners. We are also doing our part we’ve sent message to all the District Medical Officers (DMOs) that they have to treat Ebola survivors for free and make sure they provide what they have to provide for them.”
Also emphasizing that the government has made tremendous strides ever since the country was declared Ebola free “we’ve made sure we maintain prevention and control measures in all our facilities, also all of our Public Health Units (PHUs) still have triage areas and they are going to continue forever, they are going to be part of every structure now,” she said.
She concluded that Sierra Leone handled Ebola much more better that the other affected countries in the Mano River Union; “I think every Sierra Leonean should tap each other’s back and say yes we did it.”
Monday November 07, 2016