By Mohamed K. Turay
Health Alert Sierra Leone, in collaboration with RMNCAH+N Coalition (TAAC), has urged the Government of Sierra Leone through the Ministries of Finance and Health to fulfil commitments made to improve the Health Sector Service Delivery in Sierra Leone.
They made this request yesterday while participating in this year’s Bilateral National Budget Hearing held at the conference hall of the Ministry of Finance at George Street in Freetown.
The essence of Health Alert’s participation in this year’s Budget Hearing, according to its Executive Director Victor Lansana Koroma, was to advocate and lobby with the Ministry of Finance to allocate more budgets to the health sector.
Prior to the budget hearing, Health Alert and the RMNCAH-N Coalition members were distributing advocacy messages, developed in flyers and posters, to all participants present at the budget hearing.
They called on the Ministry of Finance to fulfil the 15 percent Abuja target for health and also to fulfil the 1 percent compact agreement signed with UNFPA for Government to procure essential medicines and family planning commodities for SRHR services for youths and adolescence and also women of reproductive age.
Their messages also contained that the Ministry of Health should provide 1 percent separate budget line within the RCH programme for family planning in order to reduce teenage pregnancy, unwanted pregnancies, induced abortion, HIV and AIDs etc. for the future of the younger generation.
Health Alert’s messages also called on officials of the Ministries of Health and Finance to fulfil the family planning 2030 commitment signed by the Minister of Health to increase investment on family planning and SRHR; while at the same time the Government of Sierra Leone through the Ministry of Finance to put more money on reducing infant and maternal mortality, health security and emergencies, access to more vaccines etc.
The coalition further asked that the central government and local councils, across Sierra Leone, should increase domestic revenue mobilization for health financing to support health programmes.
This advocacy campaign was funded by Africa Health Budget Network (AHBN) based in Abuja, Nigeria, in partnership with Ford Foundation.