Freetown, 31 March 2020 - The Ministry of Health and Sanitation of the Republic of Sierra Leone has reported the country’s first case of COVID-19. Samples tested at the Military 34 Hospital, and two other accredited laboratories to detect the virus, in the capital Freetown turned out positive on the evening of 30 March 2020.
Sierra Leone has instituted travel restrictions as additional precautionary and extraordinary measures in preparedness to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. A statement issued on 16 March by the Office of the President prohibits all overseas travel for all government officials and urged the general public to “refrain, as far as possible, from overseas travel until further notice”. The directive further bans all public gatherings of more than 100 people.
In November 2019, a health care associated Lassa Fever infection in Tonkolili District led to the onset of cases of the disease and death including healthcare workers. The event occurred when two patients presented at the Masanga Hospital with fever and other complications and were treated for their conditions but subsequently died. The cause of their deaths proved to be Lassa Fever, which later spread to three other people including healthcare workers with one additional death
Sierra Leone has commenced the process of developing a National School Health Policy and Strategy to create a safe, healthy school environment for learning with the aim to improve social inclusion and sustainable human capital development. The process is being coordinated by an interministerial core group led by the Ministry of Health and Sanitation. The World Health Organization in collaboration with other United Nations agencies are providing strategic technical assistance to the government for the development of these national documents with funding from the British Government through DFID.
Maternal mortality remains a major concern in Sierra Leone. Recent statistics show that maternal mortality accounts for 36 percent of all deaths among women age 15-49 in the country. This makes Sierra Leone one of the countries in the world with the highest life-time risk of women dying at pregnancy or childbirth.
Sierra Leone has adapted the third edition of the Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR) technical guidelines 2019. The new guidelines were released by the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Africa in August this year to incorporate recent recommendations by expert panels on strengthening the International Health Regulations (IHR 2005) and global health security.
Adaptation of the guidelines is a way of aligning Sierra Leone’s public health security needs and priorities with current technologies, information, tools and materials taking into consideration new trends and developments such as evidence on important diseases, conditions and events in the world.
Sierra Leone has completed its 2019 self-evaluation to determine the country’s health security capacities as required by the International Health Regulations (IHR 2005). A comprehensive multi-sectoral approach was used to fill the mandatory IHR State Party Self-Assessment Annual Reporting (SPAR) tool. The SPAR obliges countries to report annually to the World Health Assembly on their progress and compliance with implementation of the IHR requirements.
Sierra Leone is on track to become a model in Africa to meet the challenge of health emergency response by preparing its health workforce to detect, prevent, control and effectively respond to public health emergencies in the country.
Freetown – 6 June 2019: Sierra Leone has become the first country in Africa to fully transform its national disease surveillance system from paper-based to web-based electronic platform. As from today, electronic reporting of disease surveillance data is active in all public health facilities. The process, which was first piloted in just one district in 2016, was successfully rolled out to all the 14 districts and every government health facility countrywide.
