Transcription of interview with Dr. Kargbo in English

I am Dr. Samuel Kargbo, the director of the Reproductive and Child Program in the Ministry of Health and Sanitation of Sierra Leone. My role basically as the director of reproductive and child health is to coordinate plans and policies for the improvement of the maternal mortality picture in the country. It involves actually the provision of the services. It involves the ease of access of the populace in order to be able to get to the benefits of the services and basically there are four programs within the directory itself. One is the child health program that looks at all aspects of immunization and looks at aspects of management of childhood illnesses. The other program is the reproductive health and family planning program that looks at all matters of family planning and the provision also of emergency obstetric and neonatal care in the hospitals as well as in the periphery. There is a nutrition program that looks at nutrition within the health facilities and also in the community. And the school health program looks at the health of children in school and the health of adolescents both in and out of school.

(Interviewer) Let’s talk about maternal mortality. It’s a huge problem in Sierra Leone. What are you planning to do about it?

Maternal mortality is indeed a huge problem in Sierra Leone, but along the years we have seen some improvement in the indicators. About 10 years ago, it was something like 1,800 mortality rate for 100,000 live births so where we are now with the 2008 demographic health survey that told us, that showed pictures of 857 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. So what are we doing? We are trying, number one, to reduce the number of maternal death in several ways, but principal among them is the provision of emergency obstetric care for the women both in the hospitals and in what we call the basic emergency care facilities in the periphery. Now this we will do by improving the services that have been delivered, but we are also looking at improving access in the sense of the provision of very strong vehicles – ambulances - that will be able to convey the women to the hospitals when they need help. We are looking at improving communication in these hard to reach areas, getting ready communication set in the peripheral health units and we are looking also at ways in which we can be able to get free treatment for these women who are in need because we felt free treatment for them, they cannot afford it and it will be pointless in bringing them to hospital if we are not able to give them treatment that they cannot afford or if possible make it as free as possible. So in the near future, this is what we are going to concentrate on.

(Interviewer) Are you hopeful you can make some progress in the near future?

I am very hopeful given the fact that we know where we are, we know where we are going to, we know what we want. This is the first time, the issue that needs to be solved, when you know where you are and where you are going. The thing that actually keeps us back is the fact that the country is impoverished and in need for a lot of funds for us to be able to accomplish the goals that we set for ourselves to do.