Founded in 1971 as a private hospital Bai Bureh and is located in Lunghi, across the water from Freetown. Bai Bureh is only accessible via very poor quality roads. Today, this 50 bed hospital provides healthcare cover to a relatively large 800,000 catchment that includes the airport and its workers, as well as some people who come from nearby Freetown.
Medical Provision: With a total 41 staff including 4 doctors, 1 pharmacist, 25 nurses and 2 midwives hospital treats around 209 Outpatients and 184 Inpatient admissions each month.
Inter Care’s Impact: Inter Care started supporting Bai Bureh Hospital after visiting in February 2010. We knew we could provide basic medicines and dressings. Over 4,700 patients each year benefit from the free medicines provided by Inter Care.
Inter Care Visit to Bai Bureh September 2022: An Inter Care volunteer visited Bai Bureh to meet the staff, inspect the facilities and enquire about their current problems. It is extremely important to visit the medical units so that we can ensure that the support provided by Inter Care is appropriate (i.e. what we send is what they need), and also that it is used appropriately.
Particular problems identified this time included:
- Shortage of drugs: actually getting hold of the medicines they need, but also obtaining drugs locally of the highest quality (see the Case Study below)
- Electricity supply: the supply is unreliable and unpredictable, they have had spells of 3 months without any electricity so have to rely on a generator and solar unit
- Shortage of laboratory testing equipment
- Lack of equipment for the operating theatre (e.g. monitors, Autoclaves)
- Transport: in the rainy season the condition of the roads is so bad (potholes and flooding) that getting to work is a problem for the staff, they are often delayed as the only means of transport they have is bicycle. It is also, clearly, a problem for patients.
Mariana’s Story
Mariana is 71 years old woman who had travelled all over the country for ten years in search of proper treatment for her illness, but she could not find anywhere that could heal or stabilise it.
When she first visited Bai Bureh Hospital in 2019, she was diagnosed with Severe Malaria and Diabetes and was admitted immediately, and her treatment commenced straight away.
A few days later the malaria was gone and there was some massive improvement in her general health condition. Her daughter, who had been travelling with her right round the country, visited her and was so happy (and surprised) at the improvements that had taken place.
She decided to see Doctor to thank her and to ask what sort of treatment was administered that had made so much improvement in her mother’s life. The Doctor explained that it was the quality of drugs that were administered to her. Bai Bureh Hospital had just received their supplies from Inter Care which included Metformin and Glibenclamide which were given to Mariana.
Before coming to Bai Bureh, Mariana had been seen and treated by many health professionals, but she was not seeing any improvements because of the poor quality of the drugs she had been given. Sierra Leone is full of many counterfeit drugs and this is deterring the work of many health professionals in the country.
Mariana and a lot of poor women and men in the community have been placed on regular visits to the hospital to monitor them continuously as they respond to medical treatment. They are always thankful to us and the entire team at Inter Care for giving them such expensive and good quality drugs free of charge.
Bai Bureh’s Clinical Officer, Daniel Hassan Larkoh, explains why Inter Care is so important
On behalf of Bai Bureh Memorial Community Hospital I will like to register my sincere thanks and appreciation to the entire Inter Care family for the huge support over the years.
Because of you our facility has been able to maintain its quality service delivery over the years and even in difficult times. At a time when a lot of facilities cannot function properly we were here delivering quality medical services to our patients.
The quality of the drugs we receive from you cannot be compared to this country because most of the drugs a lot of clinics and hospitals are dealing with in Sierra Leone today are counterfeit drugs from Asia and other African countries. To be honest with you Inter Care is setting us apart from the others in medical service delivery in this part of the country and beyond.