By Umu Thoronka in Makeni
September 17, 2020, (SALONE TIMES)
MAKENI – The Vice Chairman for the Polio Persons Development Association (POPDA) Sulaiman ‘Sixties’ Kamara has lamented that persons living with disabilities especially polios are still facing insurmountable challenges to access the free health care facilities prescribed in books for them.
Sulaiman made this disclosure when SALONE TIMES visited their POPDA Camp situated at Magbenteh in the outskirts of Makeni, Bombali District, Northern Region of Sierra Leone.
Explaining their ordeals, Sulaiman noted that whenever persons with disabilities visit most of the public health facilities especially in Makeni, they will be told that medications allotted to them for disabled had run out and that they will be referred to the cost recovery units to buy the said medication. He said that this has become a systemic pattern that has been machinated by health workers to deliberately exclude them from the scheme.
The outspoken Vice Chairman lamented that Sierra Leone is a country where many good things that should benefit persons living with disabilities are written in books but in reality a farce. He added that the most shunned minority group in the country in terms of equal access to employment both in the private and public sectors are persons living with disabilities.
“So when health practitioners have nurtured the habit of referring us to cost recovery unit, where do they think we’ll get the moneys from? Sulaiman Sixties Kamara asked rhetorically.
In order to address this challenge they are facing, Sulaiman Sixties disclosed that they had some people he referred to as ‘their friends’ residing in the United States of America who were helping them with moneys directly paid to the Garden Clinic in Makeni for them to access health services but this opportunity came to a complete halt following the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic. As the United States of America is one of the badly hit countries with COVID-19, their friends could not sustain that support and that for now, accessing medical attention is on them and hence they cannot afford the cost, their health and general wellbeing is not guaranteed.
“Let me use this medium to unequivocally state that health services for persons living with disabilities, just like pregnant and lactating mothers, are totally free. So whether it is the Ministry of Health and Sanitation that is not meeting the threshold for medical supplies to heath facilities or the medical practitioners are just plotting to either distort moneys from us or to sabotage the system, disabled must be treated seriously like any other persons”. Sulaiman blasted.
Similarly, Sulaiman Sixties bemoaned on the state of affairs at the POPDA Camp which contains over four hundred inmates and noted that life for them in the camp is becoming unbearable. He said they are no longer getting the kinds of support they were getting before the COVID-19 pandemic. Though they have skills training and fundraising facilities like: auto mechanic, shoe making, carpentry, tailoring, soap making and a bakery, they still cannot sustain the efficient running of them because of lack of funds and external supports. He explained that with more supports, they will not just capacitate themselves rather, they will sustain the running of those facilities and proceeds from them will help to keep their colleagues off the streets as beggars. He however praised the Ministry of Social Welfare for their supports towards them.
Confirming this, the Social Services Officer II of the Ministry Social Welfare; Yayah Kargbo said the Ministry is aware of the challenges the disabled at POPDA and other camps within the region are facing. He said that the Ministry had visited the POPDA camp on several occasions and recently, the Association was given the sum of fifty million (50,000,000) Leones to augment their activities like gara tie dying, soap making etc. Yayah added that though the Ministry cannot give the association direct food benefit, they are trying to link them with the World Food Programme (WFP) to see how their concerns with regards to food will be addressed. Yayah retorted that as a Ministry, they are always willing to continue with their supports to disabled because their safety and welfare is the core of their existence.
