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Sierra Leone July 2010
Stephen O'Brien, Minister for International Development
I am in the maternity ward at Bo District Hospital, this is a visit in the southern
part of Sierra Leone. We've had a tremendous scale-up and jump in
the figures of people who are able to access the healthcare facilities.
DFID working through a number of partners, in particular local doctors, nurses, midwives
and also the Health Department have been able to make this transformational change and it's
making a real difference, as you can see behind me, to the lives of the women and indeed the
very young children, here in the Bo district. This is really important in increasing the
opportunities not only to save lives of the under-fives and pregnant mothers, from the scourge of
malaria, but also to make sure they have good safe childbirth and also good advice on reproductive
health and it's an opportunity to get a full package of health measures, this is to do
with reproductive health, to do with family planning, to do with how they keep themselves
and their babies healthy, to have malaria prevention so that they get the idea of how
to really use nets, and nets are distributed at the same time so it is a real opportunity
to bear down on the biggest killer in Africa.
Well we've had an extraordinary experience today when with the Student Partnership Worldwide,
which is now known as Restless Development, which is a very good name to describe how
there is an urgency and a young energy involving the young people, both volunteers, occasionally
from abroad but primarily from within Sierra Leone, who are there to try and make sure
that children, teenagers and young adults understand the enormous importance of how
they remain healthy, how they make their choices about when they have *** relations and
the opportunities to use contraception and other methods which are going to keep them healthy.
Actor: If me and you be faithful and others who are married, they will not
be infected with ***...
We've all seen something which is really powerful and it's a communication opportunity for all
the people here, who will now become ambassadors for the message. So there's a tremendous opportunity
for us to build on this good practice.
We have been to the Family Support Unit, this is a fairly small premises, which is attached
to the main police station in Bo. Part of the problem for many women here is
that they do suffer *** and physical violence, and they are finding it very difficult to
have the confidence to take their troubles and the serious physical damage let alone
the emotional and psychological damage as they seek refuge from what has often been
a very, very bad experience. So DFID has been very pleased to be a partner
in helping the Family Support Unit, where We had a good presentation, jointly from the
women who are running it, the men who are helping and also the police officers who are
partners in this. This was a tremendous initiative, it does
need to develop more, and it is giving people an opportunity not only to mediate but also
to hold some people to account where they really have perpetrated some of the most awful crimes.
This is an initiative that is worth pursuing
and one which could give hope to many women in Sierra Leone who have not had hope before.
To find out more about how the UK government is helping in Sierra Leone visit: www.dfid.gov.uk/sierraleone