By: Alusine Rehme Wilson – (AR-WILSON)
Standardized Health facilities in the country has been challenging despite efforts from past and current governments, Sierra Leone as a nation still struggles for better health system. For almost several decades now, the country has made efforts to improving the Health sector but can only boast of an improving medical service for Children, Lactating and Pregnant Mothers nationwide.
Pharmacists in the country belonging to the National Society of Pharmacists have frowned at related parties whose hands are on the construction of a health facility situated at Kingharman Road in Freetown for a latest neglect on their relevance pointing out to the failure of hearing to their concerns for constructing a dispensary and shelves for the store proposed by both NMSA and hospital management at the center.
For months now, when the construction of a health facility situated at Kingharman Road in Freetown begun, the National Pharmacists Association learnt that there is no office space for the Pharmacist and its dispensary is non-functional they raised an alarm and made follow ups to the hospital management and two rooms were provided to the them that were used as a dispensary and the other as a cost recovery store plus the ground basement that was originally left as the main store, a work that was jointly done with the Ministry of Health and Sanitation, UNFPA, the Contractors and Kingharman Road Hospital Management team, a forensic revelation by a close source from the National Pharmacist Association revealed to this writer.
“We had a meeting with the NMSA Director and the Deputy, who came to inspect the Pharmacy facilities for the newly built hospital. To my surprise, what was allocated to us before had already be taken away from us by the Medical Superintendent (with support from the Ministry) and reallocated to be a TB clinic. Dr. Sandi and Batema further pleaded that we still maintain the basement not only as a store but also as a dispensary and office for the Pharmacist. I agreed to that because the hospital is beautiful but has space constraint example: no space for HIV clinic, TB cline, triage and many important functional departments and it was agreed that the entrance to the store would be constructed properly and used as a dispensary and back of it will be the Pharmacists office so as to enable proper supervision considering the size of the building”, the former Pharmacist at the King Harman Road Hospital in Freetown, earlier noted.
It was also revealed to this medium that few months down the line, the KRH wrote to the Health Ministry to Finance the project and they requested for a Bill of quantity, schematic plans and total cost from them and they promptly contacted NMSA to provide technical support for that process and the Pharmacy, there and then Augustine Brima and others made inputs on how the proposed dispensary should look like which was drawn on a beautiful schematic design that was put together and dropped to the Permanent Secretary which was later sent to the finance department.
This medium also notes that several follow up on the issue were made by the hospital management and indeed a correspondence from the Ministry was formally written that confirmed that they cannot finance the construction of the dispensary and shelves for the store and that the KRH are to seek funding elsewhere a scenario that is similar for other new hospitals under construction or almost completed now such as the Rokupa Hospital in the Eastend and the Lumley Hospital.
However, the cries of the National Association of Pharmacists is worth to be acknowledged for enhancing a more improved system in the medical sector, to have standardized health structures in the country and to minimize and possibly end the rate of high health risks.
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