Sierra Leone President Koroma supports our Campaign
We reached a milestone in the history of our campaign when we received a declaration of support from His Excellency, Ernest Bai Koroma, President of the Republic of Sierra Leone. On May 20th our advocacy for the inclusion of Free Healthcare within the National Constitution took our team, including our Country Director to meet the President and engage him on the issue.
The President declared his full support with the words: “everything you are doing to see the Free Healthcare into the Constitution has a partner in me”. President Koroma added that sustaining the Free Healthcare Initiative within which for pregnant women, lactating mothers and under-five children have access to free healthcare is something that every Sierra Leonean is looking for and the current process of revising the National Constitution is an unique opportunity to make this happen.
A month earlier, the President’s wife, the First Lady, Sia Nyama Koroma also declared her support for the campaign and promised to work with our team to ensure that we achieve our key goal of making free healthcare for lactating mothers, pregnant women and under-five children sustainable in Sierra Leone.
The campaign team has been moving across the country sharing our work, rallying support and striving for this vital change. A day before the meeting with the President, the campaign team together with the community mobilizers, media and music ambassadors presented our position paper to the Constitutional Review Committee (CRC) at the CRC secretariat in Freetown. As we continue disseminating the campaign messages across the country, communities’ awareness support for our advocacy has dramatically increased in all corners of Sierra Leone.
Our campaign team also attended another very important occasion, the “Mami en Pikin Welbodi Week” (Maternal and Child Health Week), launched in Bo on Thursday 5th June. This was another strong opportunity to met and engage our key target audiences including the President who officially launched the event.
“Free healthcare na di constitution, free healthcare so tay go!” (Free healthcare in the constitution, free healthcare forever!) Is the slogan recently developed by our community campaigners. We hope to see it becomes a reality here in Sierra Leone!
