What Being a Sierra Leonean Really Means

This weekend you will find that there are Sierra Leone Independence Day Celebrations all around the world whereever you find a group of Sierra Leoneans. Sierra Leoneans like to party and don't really need an excuse to do so. 27 April 1961, Sierra Leone won its independence from British colonial rule. I can understand the celebrations in the first two years after we gained independence but what are we celebrating now? Before I lay into the waste of money that Independence day celebrations are, let me give you a brief look at the life of the average Sierra Leonean. Here are links of what Sierra Leoneans go through everyday. This article http://tiny.cc/Zbg2Z or this http://tiny.cc/SBWPe give you an idea of the state of healthcare in the country.
Then you have the statistics which are: Nearly 6 million people but only 168 doctors. Which means 1 doctor for nearly 50,000 people.
70% of adults can't read or write and the same number is unemployed. The average life expectancy of a Sierra Leonean is 42 years.
70% of people live on less than 50 pence a day (anyone living on less than 50p a day is classed as extremely poor by the World Bank). This means that 36% of people cannot meet their daily food needs and 60% of children are chronically malnourished
Not forgetting that Sierra Leone has the highest rate of children dying and pregnant women dying in the world. It is also ranked the poorest and most under-developed country in the world. So I ask you again. What are we celebrating? Would life under British rule be as bad as life is today? Would we have had the 11 year civil war?
Given the choice I wouldn't want to be under British colonial rule with its rascist policies and unfair actions. And perhaps that is what we celebrate - the freedom to make our own mistakes. Shame we can't seem to do anything else.

Better Antenatal Care for Sierra Leone

I have just come back home from looking after my friend's three children. She was in hospital for two weeks after having a baby. She developed complications during pregancy which meant that her baby had to be delievered by caesarean section and she spent a week in a High Dependency Unit. It made me think. Had she been in Sierra Leone where 1 in 8 pregnant women die during pregancy and childbirth, she certainly would have died. It is true that most pregnancies go without a hitch and only about 15% of women develop complications during pregnancy. But the problem is that in Sierra Leone not many women have proper antenatal care. So those women who are at risk of developing complications are missed and also because there is a critical shortage of trained/skilled birth attendants, many women are giving birth in dangerous situations. Of course we at HealthySalone do not just point out problems, we also plan to tackle them.
We are launching our Buy a Brick Campaign to raise £2 million to build a state of the art Women and Children's Centre in one of the biggest hospitals in the capital city. The centre will have an antenatal care unit, a fetal medicine unit, a delivery suite, post natal care suite, specialist care baby unit and a community midwife service. We will train needed maternity and paediatric staff. In fact this will be the first time in a long time that will Sierra Leone will have trained paediatric nurses.
The future is bright for healthcare in Sierra Leone. If you want to help us please go to www.healthysalone.org.uk or email kushe@healthysalone.org.uk for more information.
Together, we can change the future.