Sierra Leone will deliver over two million pieces of personal protective equipment (PPE) donated by the COVID-19 Action Fund for Africa (CAF-Africa) to 13,500 community health workers nationwide. The last mile distribution will be monitored by Partners In Health, in collaboration with UNICEF, and Sierra Leone’s Ministry of Health & Sanitation.
At the handing over ceremony, Partners In Health (PIH)—CAF-Africa partner in Sierra Leone presented 2.2 million surgical grade masks, 320,000 pairs of gloves, over 40,000 face shields to Dr. Anthony Augustine Sandi, Deputy Minister of Health.
“To safeguard community health during the pandemic, we must protect community health workers as they monitor, screen, refer, educate, and support families about the virus,” said Jourdan McGinn, country representative PIH.
“We must keep them safe as they meet pre-existing health needs and concerns around HIV, TB, malaria, and maternal health, and beyond.”
The PPE distribution will be supported by UNICEF to ensure that each of the country’s CHWs gets their supply.
“These categories of health workers (community health workers) have been hard at work in communities, ensuring that fears, myths, and missing information do not deter or reduce access to health, nutrition services, particularly by pregnant women, lactating mothers, and children under the age of five,” said Dr. Suleiman Braimoh, country representative UNICEF Sierra Leone.
According to Dr. L. Sandi, director of Sierra Leone’s National Medical Supply Agency (NMSA), CAF-Africa PPE donation is the first they have received for the dedicated use of community health workers.
“Community health workers are human beings. They need PPEs because they need to protect themselves from contacts when they have face to face community interactions,” said Elizabeth Musa, national coordinator, community health workers program, Sierra Leone.
“They need to protect themselves, or else they will easily contact COVID, then there is a tendency for them to share it with community members.”
Including Sierra Leone, CAF-Africa has donated PPE to a dozen countries in West, Central, and South Africa.
The COVID-19 Action Fund for Africa is a continent-wide collaborative effort to aggregate and address the unmet need for COVID-19 related supplies for community health workers across as many as 20 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. CAF-Africa pools resources to secure competitive prices for quality-assured essential supplies and works with in-country partners and governments to deploy products to the last mile.