APC Government Neglects Community Health Workers
After 32 years of industrious service to the nation, over 2,000 members of the Sierra Leone Association of Community Health Worker (SLACHW) are worried for the fact that they are still practicing their profession illegally because of not been recognized as good contributors to the nation’s healthcare delivery system by the Government of Sierra Leone through the Ministry of Health and Sanitation especially under the supervision of the current minister, Dr. Abu-Bakarr Fofanah. (Photo: HE President Ernest Bai Koroma)
According to the dissatisfied members of the association, Parliament has enacted the Community Health Officers (CHO) Bill but, alleging that Minister Fofanah has threatened and vowed to prevent it from becoming a law by persuading President Koroma not to endorse it.
This came to the notice of the media at a press conference organized recently in Freetown by SLACHW where they further alleged that the Minister is against the passing of the CHO Bill in to law because he is preparing to establish an Allied Health Practitioners to enrich his Curriculum Vitae (CV) instead of empowering the CHO’s by given them licenses so that they can build up confidence to perform their duties constitutionally.
They therefore called on the Minister responsible to review his decision by allowing the father of the nation, President Koroma to sign or endorse the Community Health Officers Bill in to law so that they can feel protected as citizens in doing their job.
The disappointed members of SLACHW as an institution appealed to President Koroma to see reasons why he should endorse the trumpeted bill despite the utterance of the minister that even if the CHO Bill is taken for Presidential endorsement, he will stop him from doing that.
It could be recalled that during the deadly Ebola Virus Disease, Community Health Workers were leading volunteers to save lives and they have also done the same on subsequent untold natural disaster.
By Abdulai Mento Kamara
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