The Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Health and Sanitation Mr. Prince Cole has stated that inadequate budgetary allocation and late disbursement of funds to the health sector are part of the challenges affecting the health sector over the years. But went further to single out the significant health care financing spent on overseas treatment as having the most debilitating impact which drains away most of the funds on the total budget allocation to the Health Ministry from 2022 to date.
According to Mr. Prince Cole, spending such huge sums of money on overseas medical treatment goes towards enriching the medical doctors and the health care systems of those countries overseas instead of using those resources to upgrade Sierra Leone’s medical system to attain the level of efficiency.
He also mentioned that among the many other challenges which the Health Ministry faces, encroachment on the 305 acreage of land at Kerry Town which had been earmarked for the building of a medical village and a Cancer Treatment Centre, is one of the biggest which the Ministry’s budget estimate of NLe 202,992.1 will be geared towards addressing.
The Ministry of Finance had tagged a budget ceiling of NLe 123,159.001 to the Ministry of Health, which makes the excess over ceiling NLe79,833.000. He stated that the last time he and other leaders of the Ministry of Health went to confront the people encroaching on the land they were almost hounded out of there and they had to call for police intervention.
He also mentioned that another challenge which the Ministry of Finance faces is providing food, diet and nutrition for the mostly underprivileged and low-income people which are hospitalized at the Port-Loko Government Hospital which had been developed by the Ministry of Health with support from the Government of the United Arab Emirates. He said sometimes the hospital authorities are credited with foodstuff by private businesses and they run into huge arrears because of lack of funds to offset the debts incurred from the buying of foodstuff to provide for patients’ food and nutritional needs.