A bit of background

I know we sometimes complain about staff shortages in Wales, but I just got hold of a copy of the Sierra Leone Health workforce Development Plan 2006 - 2010. Here are a few comparisons for directly employed staff:

	Wales	Sierra Leone
Doctors	5,500	308
Registered nurses	21,400	1,375
Total Trained health workers	49,000	3,736
Health workers : population	1 : 63	1 : 1,705

As I understand it, urban hospitals in Freetown lose their staff to hospitals  abroad; District hospitals lose their staff to Freetown; community clinics can't find any trained staff so are staffed by assistants who have little training, supported by volunteers, who have virtually none. Add to that the lack of basic infrastructure and supplies, and may be I can start to glimpse the scale of the challenge.

Three weeks to go

On 12th October, I will be going to Sierra Leone to work in the Ministry of Health for two months. The picture behind the blog heading is apparently of a beach near Freetown and I find it difficult to reconcile with what I am reading about the challenges facing a country that was so badly butchered in a civil war that finished only seven years ago. It is, by all accounts, a friendly, safe and beautiful place, but it struggles at the very bottom of the UN Development Index (ranked 179 out of 182). About 3 times bigger than Wales, and with a population around twice the size, health services are non-existent in many areas with hospitals and clinics struggling with an almost total lack of trained staff. My role (I think) will be to support the development and implementation of a plan for training and supporting the staff they need. I just hope I can find a way to make myself useful.