Monday 6th November Part 2

Next we toured the Connaught Eye clinic, directly below the office, and it seemed to me that they are clearly achieving a lot without the sort of equipment I saw on my trip to India.

One of the biggest frustrations in Sierra Leone is around training, there is no ophthalmic nursing course, and the nurses all go to The Gambia. Before the war it was a centre of excellence. There are high hopes that the nurses college will reopen and it has moved from the Ministry of Health to the Ministry of Education recently.

After the Connaught Clinic we went to meet Mr Kabakeh Noah, who is the Community Based Rehabilitation (CBR) Programme Manager, and a member of Sierra Leone Association of the Blind (SLAB). He is totally blind himself. Sightsavers has a major project with SLAB, part funded by Comic Relief. A major advantage is that SLAB is the single, accredited organisation of the blind in Sierra Leone (unlike in Liberia where there are several competing organisations).

We paid a joint visit to the Minister of Social Welfare, Gender and Children’s Affairs. There is a Disability Bill in draft, which the Minister believed could be put before Parliament before the end of the year. This seemed pretty optimistic to me, particularly given the number of other bills (eg Domestic Violence, Child Protection) that the Ministry were trying to get through. SLAB was essentially behind the bill, but felt that there had been inadequate consultation.

We then went on to a courtesy visit with the Deputy Minister of Health (the Minister was in Geneva for the vote on the new Director General of the World Health Organization).

We spent the afternoon at the SLAB training centre, where they were teaching skills such as baking, soap making, sewing and tie dying. SLAB membership is growing, and there is clear demand for more training centres outside Freetown.