subject: Sierra Leone health sector: YMCA to the rescue [print this page] Sierra Leone's health service delivery is on the way to improvement, courtesy of the German branch of the YMCA.
A total of 2020 under five children and scores of pregnant women in Moyamba District have been able to sustain their health, after receiving medications for safe delivery, malaria, diarrhoea, dysentery, and other diseases.
At the forefront of this action, is the Driving YMCA doctor for Sierra Leone', a mobile medical team that seeks to provide pregnant women and children in remote areas of Sierra Leone, with basic medical care to avoid them the trouble of long and dangerous journey to find clinic.
The Coordinator of the project, Susanne Schroder (photo) says that since her first visit in 1985, she was overwhelmed by the warmth and hospitality of the Sierra Leonean people and in 2005, she has been organizing trips from Germany to Sierra Leone for the German YMCA, in the context of the partnership programme between the German and the Sierra Leonean YMCA.
She explained that the driving doctor mobile team has been working in the Southern region of Moyamba and that there was no recorded deaths of pregnant women the whole of last year, and a significant reduction in mortality of under fives in all the villages.
"Once funding is guaranteed, we are going to expand the project in different areas in Sierra Leone to compliment the efforts of government to improve the health status of its citizens, and hope that the government of Sierra Leone will also provide the necessary support to our organization, to fulfill the needs of poor people", Mrs Schroeder says.
There is no shortage of energy to accelerate development in Sierra Leone. The YMCA representative has also launched the Moyamba Tours to attract Germans and other tourists into the West African nation, in a bid to heed to the Sierra Leonean President's clarion call for foreign investments in the country.
"Flyers have been printed and also advertisements have been published on a leading German newspaper, (Sueddeutsche Zeitung) about Sierra Leone and a cooperation with a travel agency from Switzerland is being implemented and Sierra Leone is being advertised on its website, www.babaldar.com. There will be a batch of German tourists that will visit Sierra Leone in April", Mrs Schroeder added.
The road to achieve sustainable development in Sierra Leone is yielding positive result and the idea by the YMCA representative to tap its tourism potential is timely and means a new dawn for the country.
