By Foday Moriba Conteh
During a short but remarkable programme, the Community Care Centre for the Armed Forces Training Centre at Benguema, Waterloo, was commissioned on the 13th July 2020 by the Freetown City Council (FCC) in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and the National COVID Response centre, NACOVERC.
The launch was made official by a symbolic ribbon-cutting ceremony by Mayor Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr and Mr Abdul-Rahman Fofanah, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Health in the presence of Tom Vens, EU Ambassador, Kobi Bentley, Head of DFID, Brigadier-General Marah, representing the CDS, Lt Col Stephen Sevallie, Case Management Pillar Lead, Councillors of FCC, several partners from NACOVERC, MSF, Concern, CRS, Red Cross, RSLAF and WARD-C amongst others.
The Community Care Centre is conceived as a facility primarily for patients from Freetown’s informal settlements who cannot be isolated safely elsewhere, and it is part of FCC’s COVID-19 Preparedness and Response Plan, which supports Sierra Leone’s National COVID-19 response. The CCC comes at a crucial time when other sites like the Fourah Bay College that had been repurposed to respond to COVID-19 are being converted back to their original use.
The Benguema Community Care Centre is equipped with 180 beds, medical equipment and a range of social amenities to ensure the safety and comfort of patients of all ages.
The establishment of the Care Centre has been a multi-stakeholder project managed jointly by the NACOVERC and FCC. Clinical and non-clinical staff, specially selected by MOHS for the role, will man the centre.
The infrastructural improvements required re-purposing AFTC as a CCC, food for patients and the EU and DFID, coordinated by partners CONCERN, CRS and the SL Red Cross, have funded some of the centre’s running costs. The Centre’s staffs have received thorough training jointly by NACOVERC, MOHS, SLRC and MSF.
The centre has full community buy-in, with many staff drawn from local communities. The CCC has been fully re-purposed with uninterrupted water supply, drainage, sanitation and medical equipment and is anticipated to be operational for at least 5 months.
