Lungi health facilities desperate

A Ministry of Health assessment mission led by Sierra Leone’s deputy health minister visited the Lungi referral hospital - close to Freetown - and five local clinics on Thursday and was told that help was needed urgently, according to a 25-26 May situation report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). An International Medical Corps doctor working at the hospital said that facilities were “desperately overextended and we’re looking for any kind of intervention from NGOs and international organisations”. The week prior to the visit there were 78 patients, suffering mainly from gunshot wounds, in a hospital not equipped to deal with trauma cases. The team was told that the hospital was also receiving 300 to 350 cases of bloody diarrhoea every week from just two of the local health units and that some of its equipment had been vandalised. The mission expressed concern over conditions but “funding was pending for an emergency intervention”, OCHA reported. Meanwhile around 350 former child soldiers from the Interim Care Centre (ICC) in the northern town of Lunsar were relocated to Lungi on 12 May by the Roman Catholic NGO CARITAS. A spokesman for CARITAS told OCHA that some of the children, whose average age was 10, still had problems with bed-wetting and nightmares.