By Foday Moriba Conteh
During an exclusive interview with the Minister of Health and Sanitation, Dr. Austin Demby, on Tuesday 26th October, 2021 at his office at Youyi Building, Brookfields in Freetown, he intimated this medium that his Ministry is very committed towards the development of the health sector in the country.
He said that since he was sworn in as Minister of the Ministry of Health and Sanitation in February 2021 the Ministry has been looking at multiple tasks within, adding that a week after he was sworn in as Minister there was an Ebola outbreak in Guinea and the Ministry was able to mount a robust response by not only working with their counterpart in Guinea in containing the outbreak in Guinea but also embarked on incredible preparedness in the county by working with all frontline healthcare workers across the country in preventing the importation of the virus in the country and also to make sure that they were able to respond to it in a proactive and timely manner.
The Minister maintained that the Ministry has been very active in engaging their external partners in making COVID-19 vaccines available in the country of which he said the country currently has over 450,000 people that have taken their first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine with close to 2 percent of the population that has already been vaccinated and close to 5 percent of the population have had at least one shot with close to 11 percent of the country’s population of eligible to have been vaccinated at least with one shot.
He continued that they have also been working on looking at all the hospitals network in the country of which he said Connaught Hospital is considered to be in a bad state but said they were able to change the Management structure and that things are changing slowly at the facility, stating that the Ministry is also looking at a network of hospitals in order to revamp them by making them more responsive in terms of service delivery. He disclosed that they have been able to secure 80 billion Leones to renovate 23 hospitals across the country which he said will commence in due time.
Dr. Austin Demby also used the opportunity to comment of the issues about the postings of Doctors into both horizontal and vertical positions which was done by the Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Thomas T. Samba at the Ministry of Health & Sanitation of which he said on numerous occasions, they have discussed the issue of postings of Doctors into both horizontal and vertical positions and he had always let the leadership of the Ministry know that he has no issue with postings or moving doctors horizontally.
He underscored that his policy has always been that for all key national leadership and managerial positions, their approach would be a consultative, competitive, and transparent collaboration that identifies the best candidates for posting to important positions.
The Minister disclosed that prior to his trip to the United States on the 11th September 2021 he had an exit brief and left handing over note with the Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Thomas T. Samba and the leadership of which he instructed the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) to collate resumes of potential candidates to be considered by the leadership team for certain positions and they will discuss further on his returns.
He further revealed that he was very shocked and surprised that colleagues overseas had seen the draft appointment letters that he had signed without any consultation with him as a Minster of the Ministry, stating that he immediately informed the CMO of the documents and asked that all promotion announcements be put on hold till he returns to Sierra Leone on the 8th October 2021 but said those instructions were ignored and the CMO proceeded with making the announcements on October 5th and 6th respectively.
The Minister went on to say subsequently, on October 6th, he wrote to the Chief Medical Officer instructing him to rescind his announcements no later than close-of-business on Friday October 8th of which he said he again ignored his instructions. He furthered that after his arrival in Freetown, he convened a meeting of senior staff and asked the CMO formally if he had rescinded the appointment letters he had issued and by the deadline indicated but said the Chief Medical Officer said that such has not been done.
He informed him that his actions were unacceptable and were a clear case of insubordination to the highest level.
The Health Minister said that with less than a month before Dr. Samba’s contract expires, he is deliberately working to create a very toxic working environment that undercuts his authority and ability to do his work and that any additional moment he remains in his position would not only be detrimental to the operations of the Ministry, but would stifle effective work at a time when the whole Ministry should be focused on improving critical health outcomes.
This medium was made to understand that the Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Thomas T. Samba has been sent on leave with
immediate effect by the Director General, Human Resources Management Office (HRMO), Asumana Tucker pursuant to the end of his statutory retirement period in the Civil Service on 30th November 2021.
Dr. Austin Demby concluded by reaffirming the Ministry’s commitment towards the improvement and development of the health sector in the country of which he described the health sector as a very important trajectory for the better, adding that as a Ministry they are working towards undertaking a transformational change within the health sector that will be responsive to its citizens, that have adequate and qualitative staff that will be able to respond to the needs of patients, that has infrastructure that will be able to support the response they have, that has the drugs and medication available for the Free Health Care initiative, that work on prevention activities and that has an impressive network of services that are able to manage diseases at the remote end all the way to the Centre of their facilities etc.
Very interesting