Better Lives Foundation set to better lives of Yoni people
Yonibana, Feb. 10 (SLENA) – Better Lives Foundation, a UK-based charity organization, has established a health centre in Yonibana, Yoni Chiefdom, Tonkolili District.
The centre has been named Yonibana Sai Hospital, named after a son of the soil, Sai, a former school teacher who traveled to the UK in the 1990s and influenced the charity organization to come and serve the health needs of his people.
The Chairperson of Better Lives Foundation, Davi Patel, while speaking to SLENA in Yonibana recently, said the Foundation has conducted medical camps in many developing countries of the world including Africa.
She added that in 2006 they arrived in Yonibana on the request of the late Victor Kanu, a former diplomat, so that they could help his people.
“Initially, we operated a clinic in the town, but when we saw the growing number of patients visiting the clinic we decided to construct a permanent structure with the help of the natives,” Davi Patel said, noting that because of the acute shortage of trained medical personnel to run the hospital they had to return three or four times every four months to provide basic health services to the community.
She added that while their staffs are volunteers from many different countries, their serves are free of cost including surgery.
She also disclosed that the organization is supporting forty-three (43) local students in Njala University and Masanga hospital from where they recruit their local staff.
Ms. Patel said when they shall have had trained and qualified medical personnel, the Yonibana hospital would now be run on a daily basis.
On the challenges facing the Foundation in Sierra Leone, the Chairperson highlighted the difficulties they go through in clearing their containers at the Queen Elizabeth II quay in Freetown, particularly the NRA, Pharmacy Board and the Ministry of Health.
“Last year alone we spent twelve million leones (Le12 m) to get our containers released from the quay,” she recalled.
ADK/Yon/SLENA
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