YGI News

Sierra Leone is a nation of wide economic disparity, in which politics has trumped social justice and where national resources are dominated by those in power. Some demand that the nation can only restore its economy when it restores its institutions. By “institutions,” critics mean to refer to any structure that influences (and is influenced by) the behaviour of the people through affecting responsibilities, motivations, and liberties.

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Sierra Leone is one of the poorest countries in the world, with its poverty increasing daily. It also has enormous problems with HIV/AIDS, malaria, malnutrition, as well as severe shortages of water, medication, health care, and housing. The life expectancy for the average Sierra Leonean is one of the lowest in the world. Unfortunately, the international has been reluctant to provide aid, believing that Sierra Leone’s problems can be traced only to internal problems such as civil war, bad governance, and endemic corruption. It has been proposed that Sierra Leone’s problems are more complicated than that, and are tied to its complicated land laws and trade policies, many of which have been directly exploited through globalization.

The Sierra Leonian education system is deplorable. In Sierra Leone, there are no penalties for underachievement for students and teachers. In addition, the nation lacks the rigorous checks and observation common to educational systems in developed nations. There is also a severe lack of school facilities and the literacy rate among all sectors of the population is inadequate for a nation that wishes to escape the bonds of poverty.

In the years following Sierra Leone’s 1961 independence from Great Britain, their education system was the envy of neighbouring nations. The modern education in Sierra Leone is failing for a number of reasons, most visible being a lack of resources to provide free education to its students. It is suggested that the lack of free education is not the primary issue that needs reform. Instead, the immediate necessary task is to reform the national education system to make it more relevant to the needs of the citizen, as well as to provide services that are sustainable in the long term. Above all, it is imperative to provide education of a higher quality than has been recently offered.

There has been an acute shortage in medication and medical equipment at the Regional Referral Hospital in the Bombali District of northern Sierra Leone, a facility that serves over 200,000 residents. As a result, there have been increases in preventable deaths among poor patients and of poor patients being abandoned at hospitals by relatives unable to pay fees. Nurses report that hospital conditions are appalling, due to inadequately working or broken equipment and insufficient incentives for many of the employees.

Many deaths and protracted illnesses have been caused by the poor health care in the Kailahun district. Health centers in this region, which treat common diseases such as malaria and diarrhoea, increasingly lack medicine and qualified medical professionals. As a result, there has been considerable difficulty in reaching these hospitals using the existing road infrastructure. Local residents are now turning to traditional methods and medicines to disastrous effect. Exacerbating the situation is the overall lack of hygienic toilet and sewage systems. Residents have appealed to local government and NGOs (non-government organizations) to assist in fighting the sharp rise in deaths.