Samuel Kallon 
By Bobor Dan Kamara
The Minister of Health and Sanitation, Dr. Austin Demby confirms of an ultra-modern health system tracker in the country.
The tracker system’s work identifies the location of pregnant women; their health status including their unborn baby nationwide.
Demby spoke during Ministry of Information and Civic Education weekly Press Briefing on Tuesday 18th June 2024.
He further talked on the use of colour signals to identify safe and unsafe pregnancy.
“Green signal shows that the pregnant woman and her unborn baby are safe while the yellow signifies some amount of complexities and the red shows death.”
He said this health system tracker is in line with the Universal Health Coverage policy which aims at accounting for each and every one ( child or pregnant woman) in a geographical area.
He added that they are keen to ensuring that each baby is born healthy and strong and the child will eventually be transcend to school health care and later to adulthood.
Dr. Demby said they had made spectacular gains to reduce maternal mortality drastically in the country.
Prior to 2018, he noted, Sierra Leone has been one of the highest maternal mortality rate affected countries in the world ranging from 1,300 deaths in every 100,000 pregnant women, but, he added, the death rate has steadily declined from 1,300 to 443 in the past five years.
“We will continue in this positive trajectory to monitor progress throughout the pregnancy stage.”
He further noted that the similar gain has been made considerably in reducing the death of under-five children but not as excellence as that of the pregnant women mainly because the babies are being monitored for a longer period of time.
Dr. Demby noted that this significant stride is made as a result of their 360 monitoring system on everything about the baby in their radar including preventive vaccination from diseases and balanced nutrition for the baby to survive and thrive.
In an effort to reduce infant mortality, he stated that despite having a good diagnostic and treatment for malaria, they have made vaccine for malaria available for children.
He further said that they have distributed five million mosquito nets to adults to protect breastfeeding mothers and babies from catching malaria.
“We are the only country in sub-Sahara Africa that has a comprehensive plan for child survival,” he confirmed.
He vowed to create an emergency operation center for child-survival and pregnant women just like in the case of Ebola and Covid-19 meant to reduce infant and maternal mortality rate.
He also stated that the sixteen million dollar Pediatric Hospital at Lumley commissioned by President Bio, of recent, is a testament of his government commitment to ensuring quality health care for children.
The work was completed prior to the stipulated date.
Dr. Demby expresses his heartfelt gratitude to development partners, World Bank, Global Fund and the Government of Sierra Leone who spearheaded a large portion of support towards the ministry’s significant gains over the years.
