One-third of all babies die in Kenema, IRC says

A report just issued by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and the Ministry of Health and Sanitation of Sierra Leone indicates that 303 out of every 1,000 infants born in Sierra Leone's diamond-rich Kenema District die before reaching their first birthday.

The report is based on a mortality survey conducted in January 2001 among 500 households. It indicates that Kenema's annual mortality rate is 44 deaths per 1000 persons while the national rate is 24:1000. The research found that most of the deaths were caused by preventable illnesses, mainly malaria, diarrhoeal diseases and respiratory infections in that order.

ECOWAS urged to arrest Bockarie

The Sierra Leonean government has urged the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to help arrest former Revolutionary United Front (RUF) commander, Sam Bockarie, and extradite him to Freetown, the 'Concord Times' newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Presidential Spokesman Septimus Kaikai was quoted by the paper as saying the government had written to ECOWAS to facilitate the arrest and deportation to Freetown of Bockarie, whose nom de guerre was 'Maskita'. For over a year after falling out with then RUF leader Foday Sankoh, Bockarie was lived in the Liberian capital, Monrovia. But with President Charles Taylor under increasing pressure to stop backing the RUF, Bockarie was recently said to have left Liberia for an unknown destination.