By Katie Haxall
Bendu, SIERRA LEONE 17 Mar 2006 - Amina Issa Mohamud, an International Rescue Committee health coordinator, arrives in the small village of Bendu in the Kono district of eastern Sierra Leone. She conducts a door-to-door search for sick children with the approval of the village chief.
In one of the houses Amina finds a boy named Sasco who has a fever most likely caused by malaria, a leading cause of death among children in Kono.
After talking with Sasco’s grandmother, Amina finds that his father is at work on the family farm and his mother has gone to take a younger sibling to be immunized. So Amina alerts the village chief about Sasco’s condition. The chief then asks the village’s community health worker to take Sasco to a health center five kilometers away where a nurse gives him anti-malarial medication.
Amina returns to check on Sasco a few days later and finds him happily playing around his parents, who thank her warmly. Sasco’s case shows that in a country ravaged by years of conflict and destruction, simple solutions can yield big rewards.
Amina and four other IRC health coordinators supervise and support 300 community health workers who live in villages scattered throughout Kono and who focus on improving the health of the district’s children.
These health workers are the first to respond when a child needs help and are equipped to treat common problems such as diarrhea. When a child needs additional care, it is the community health worker’s job to bring the child to a government health center, as in Sasco’s case. The IRC supports 20 such centers, stocking them with medical supplies and training staff.
This network of care reaches roughly 16,000 children under five and more than 21,000 women of childbearing age. And it is flexible enough to survive even the instability of armed conflict, says IRC senior technical advisor for child survival Dr. Emmanuel d’Harcourt. “It sounds simple, but it saves lives, and these simple solutions do not break down when war strikes,” he says.
The IRC-supported health centers also distribute insecticide-treated mosquito nets to combat malaria, the cause of more than half of child deaths in Sierra Leone. One mother who received a net expressed her appreciation not just for its health benefits but for finally being able to sleep soundly after many nights interrupted by biting mosquitoes.
The nets are also used as an incentive for families to complete a child’s course of vaccinations, and have helped to increase vaccination coverage in the district.
The success of health interventions such as these, and the survival of children like Sasco, is the motivation – and the inspiration – for the IRC’s child survival program, instilling a sense of hope as Sierra Leoneans rebuild their war-torn nation.
