Sierra Leone is among the very few countries in West Africa with a negligible number of cases of the respiratory illness known as COVID-19 which has been spreading across all corners of the globe like wildfire since December.
Amid the pandemic, Sierra Leone has activated the Emergency Operation Center (EOC) established during the 2014 Ebola outbreak that claimed over 4,000 lives.
Almost 100 percent of Ebola deaths (about 11,000 died in West Africa) were recorded in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.
“We have been training staffs for various pillars. We activated the emergency operation center at level two and we have created the pillars to support the center. We have been doing training and deployment of personnel into every pillar and these are the pillars we institute into different functions to enhance the coronavirus preparedness and response activities,” said Rev. Can. Dr. T. T. Samba, Chief Medical Officer at the Ministry of Health and Sanitation.
Sierra Leone has banned all flights to the country and deployed its military to help enforce the closure of its borders with Guinea and Liberia in a bid to prevent the virus from spilling over to local communities.
The activities of many establishments including schools, mosques and churches have been suspended indefinitely.
President Julius Maada Bio last month declared a state of emergency and the country is presently observing a nationwide lockdown for three days from April 5-7.
According to a survey conducted from March 18 to 24 by Sanusi Research & Consulting, a newly established local firm, 61 percent of respondents say they are somewhat satisfied with measures being introduced to deal with coronavirus.
17 percent say they are very satisfied, while 16 percent say they are neither satisfied nor dissatisfied.
Only 6 percent say they are somewhat dissatisfied.
The research firm’s daily update on the COVID-19 in West Africa showed on Tuesday that Sierra Leone has recorded six cases of the disease, zero deaths and zero recoveries so far.
In comparison, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has recorded 1,754 total cases, 55 total deaths, and 334 total recoveries from the virus.
Burkina Faso remains the epicenter of COVID-19 in West Africa or the country with the highest number of total cases (345) and total deaths (17) of the fifteen ECOWAS members.
Open data for good health and wellbeing
Sierra Leone’s policies on open data and public disclosure have resulted into the passing of the Right to Access Information Act in 2013 and the formation of the Right to Access Information Commission (RAIC) in 2014.
“We try as much as possible to make data and information accessible to the public. Not only making it available to the public but in a user friendly manner. All reports produced by us or our partners are published on our website for further research purposes,” said Ms. Clementina I. Akran, head of Open Data at Statistics Sierra Leone (Stats SL).
With Prof. Osman Sankoh as Statistician General, Stats SL was the first institution in Sierra Leone to develop a Publication Scheme according to the RAI Act, which resulted in Stats SL winning a gold medal.
Sierra Leone also moved upwards in the 2018/19 Open Data Inventory report (ODIN) from #122 in 2017 to #86 in 2018/19, according to Open Data Watch.
However, open data on Sierra Leone shows that the coronavirus came at a time when the country is ranked 181 out of 189 countries in 2019 by the United Nations Human Development Index (HDI).
The 2019 HDI open data suggests that only 16 percent of Sierra Leoneans use improved sanitation facilities and a majority of them die before their 54th birthday.
Incidence of diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis is still high.
Moreover, the infant and under-five mortality rate is 81 deaths per 1,000 live births and 110 deaths per 1,000 live births respectively.
Sierra Leone suffers from one of the world’s highest maternal mortality ratios of 1,360 deaths per 100,000 live births.
“Data can help us understand the causes of these unnecessary deaths and how to prevent them,” says the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data (GPSDD).
GPSDD gives an example where satellite and cell phone data has supported the elimination of malaria in Namibia.
The Southern African nation has identified 80,000 people most critical to slowing malaria transmission.
The identification allows interventions like “bed net distribution to be optimally targeted to disrupt the infection cycle, reducing the cost of reaching to the whole population” in the Southern African country.
Sierra Leone now collects data for 24 indicators of the Sustainable Development Goal number 3 (SDG3) out of the 27 indicators meant to measure progress in achieving good health and wellbeing by 2030, according to Mr. Salieu Mansary, a senior statistician at Stats SL.
Moreover, Stats SL says it uses modern technology to collect data on 19 of the SDG3 indicators.
Stats SL, with the support of development partners such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and World Bank, has conducted a series of surveys to collect data that measures the health and wellbeing of the population.
According to its 2019 Demographic and Health Survey (DHS), 68 percent of households have at least one insecticide-treated net (ITN).
However, the malaria incident rate in Sierra Leone is 379 per 1,000 people at risk, the HDI shows for 2019.
Moreover, the 2019 DHS findings suggest that 30 percent of children are stunted and only 54 percent of infants under age six months were found to be exclusively breastfed.
Overall, 2 percent of children under age 5 showed symptoms of acute respiratory infection, 17 percent had a fever, and 7 percent experienced diarrhea.
Challenges to collect accurate data for SDG3
Sierra Leone scores poorly not only in SDG3 indicators but also in all the 17 SDGS including quality education and no poverty.
The expected schooling is 10 years and government expenditure on education is only 4.6 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) while 57.9 percent of the population is in multidimensional poverty in 2019, according to HDI.
Stats SL always complains that widespread poverty and low level of education among the general public makes it difficult or sometimes impossible for them to collect accurate data even when they employ sophisticated technologies such as computer aided personal interview.
”For example, during the DHS data collection exercise, challenges were faced in the willingness of the respondents to cooperate; because during health research there are some aspects that are clinical that involves the extraction of blood. In the DHS, it was very difficult for a lot of our respondents to actually willingly allow us to extract blood samples for testing,” Mr. Mansaray said.
Communication is also one of the most expensive exercise and daunting challenge for researchers in Sierra Leone. “We have a communication strategy, we hold meetings, we do radio talk shows, we issue flyers, we meet with paramount chiefs, and then we meet with political leaders. Unfortunately for most of the communities living in the extreme part of this country, they do not have access to radio stations, so all our effort we’ve been doing could be just water off a duck’s back.” Mr. Mansaray added.
Another challenge to collect accurate data for SDG3 indicators is lack of resources. Current health expenditure represents only 16.5 percent of GDP in 2019, according to UNDP. The country depends heavily on international aid to build its health infrastructure.
“So many partners have actually pledged their support, some have already given, some consignments, and others are already partners,” Mr. Samba responded when asked about the Ministry of Health and Sanitation’s financial preparedness to deal with COIVID-19.
The World Bank says “Sierra Leone’s economy grew by 7.8 percent on average during 2003-2014 but contracted by 21 percent in 2015 following the Ebola outbreak and a decline in the price of iron ore, the main export product”.
Moreover, the working population is losing their livelihood to high inflation and exchange rate.
For example, a 50kg bag of rice cost Le200 000 (about $26) in 2018 but price has increased to an average of 300 000 Leones (about $30) per bag in 2020, a 50 percent increase in price of the staple.
Last year, the Leone, the local currency, lost over 14 percent of its value to the US Dollar, from $1=Le8489.38 in January 2019 to $1=Le9716.71 in December 2019, according to Bank of Sierra Leone’s open data.
The 7 million residents of this former British colony have a GNI per capita of only $500 in 2018, according to the World Bank.
Therefore, one of the next challenges researchers in Sierra Leone face is to measure the impact of the COVID-19 on politics, society and the economy.
ABJ/APA