Freetown Children's Hospital gets important visitors

When we visited earlier in the year we were very pleased to be welcomed as a team to the Children's Hospital in Freetown. But the important visitors I am writing about were not us! 

Since April 2010 when the free health initiative was introduced, the results have been amazing. It is reported that in the first month, antenatal clinics in Freetown saw seven times more women than they had before and 179 per cent more children visited health centres.


A hospital doctor, Dr David Baion, has said that since health care was free the number of children dying on the wards has actually halved. This was because people were presenting themselves quicker. They were coming to the hospital when still treatable. In our Community Healthcare teaching we were asked to emphasise the importance of taking children early for treatment.

We were welcomed and shown around by Dr. Fred Martineau, who works at the hospital as part of the Welbodi Partnership team.  Welbodi is the Krio word for Health and the Partnership, which has its base in England, supports the provision of paediatric care in Sierra Leone and helps the Ola During Children's Hospital deliver quality services to its patients.


They do this by working in collaboration with the hospital management and staff and with the Ministry of Health and Sanitation to identify priorities and develop solutions. The work began in Sierra Leone in 2007.

Fred is a trainee paediatrician from the UK who is volunteering in Sierra Leone from 2010-2011. In addition to clinical work in multi-ethnic communities in Bristol and East London, he has worked with organisations supporting the health needs of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK. He trained at Bristol University, has a BSc in International Health from UCL and a Diploma of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene from Liverpool. He is a Member of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.

A home-made Triage sign in the entrance to the hospital. Triage  is the process of determining the priority of patients' treatments based on the severity of their condition. This rations patient treatment efficiently when resources are insufficient for all to be treated immediately. In spite of the benefits of free health care, it is still impossible to treat everyone efficiently due to shortage of materials and of staff.

We were invited to give blood. There was not enough time for everyone to do so, and we were assured that the needles were sterile! Sarah and Sam volunteered.

And now the really important visitors. Princess Anne, the Princess Royal and her husband visited the hospital a couple of days ago and met some of the patients.   I understand her visit has been prompted by the 50th Anniversary of Independence for the country.

Unlike us, she has also managed to visit the Mercy Ship which is still anchored in Freetown.

Ali, a volunteer nurse on the ship, has said "When she did arrive, Princess Anne was lovely. She met the two patients we had picked out for her, and then just kept right on going around that side of the ward and met all the rest of them, too. I got trapped in a corner, and so when she got around to the lady in Bed Twelve, I was the one the princess turned to when she asked about the patient's surgery.

I got to talk to the princess, bright blue scrubs and all. I've done come crazy things here on this ship, but explaining oro-nasal fistula surgery to the daughter of the Queen of England? That's right up there with the rest of them."

A bit of Sierra Leone in London

If the High Commission is regarded in law at Sierra Leonean territory, I was there last week and will visit again next week! Why? Not for the weather. Last week it was cloudy and cold with spots of rain in Eagle Street a short way from Holborn tube station. I presented visa applications for 8 people, and was welcomed and looked after by a pleasant and efficient young man who gave me the raffle tickets that I must present to get the completed passports.

The High Commissioner has been in London for nearly a year.   H.E. Mr. Edward M. Turay presented his credentials to H.M. The Queen on the 23rd March last year. As a young man he qualified as a barrister at nearby Lincoln's Inn, which has produced many well-known students who moved on from the law to politics, Sir Thomas Moore, William Penn, William Pitt and Margaret Thatcher among them.

After the High Commission I went on an entertaining guided walk around the Inns of Court and we passed through Lincoln's Inn.

The entrance to Lincoln's Inn

The High Commission is currently arranging events to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the granting of Independence to Sierra Leone in 1961. These began with a launch Dinner and Dance Gala Extravaganza on the 12th February in Bayswater, London, at which the President of the Republic, H.E. Dr. Ernest Bai Koroma, was present.

The actual day in 1961 was the 27th April and the Duke of Kent represented the Queen.

Her Majesty visited the country with her husband, Prince Philip, later in the year. Her signature in the visitor's book in Freetown Cathedral is dated 20th November.



Moving on - Keep going!

I am reproducing a thought from the UCB 'Word for Today'. This applies to any task in life, but for all of us who love Sierra Leone and see the problems that must be grappled with to lift people from the suffering and poverty that are all too real, it is inspiration.  To find the original, click on the 'Christian Radio and Daily Readings' link on the left.

It is highly relevant to our interest in Sierra Leone, as the events it describes are contemporary with the founding of Freetown.   The original settlement was founded in 1787 and re-founded in 1792. John Wesley died on the 2nd March, 1791.

John Wesley

...in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.' Galatians 6:9

Why don't we see more of God's promises fulfilled in our lives? Because we overlook the process. It is in the process of reaching the promise that we become discouraged and quit. Success in any venture lies in holding on, even when others let go. We demand instant gratification and if we don't get it we leave our jobs, our churches, and even our families. But there's a process we must go through, regardless of our level of faith. There are no shortcuts. We've got to pay full price; it never goes on sale. Endurance is the price tag of achievement: '...in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart' (Galatians 6:9 NKJV). For years, William Wilberforce pushed Parliament to abolish the slave trade. Discouraged, he was about to give up when his elderly friend John Wesley heard of his campaign, and from his deathbed called for pen and paper. With trembling hand Wesley wrote, 'Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and of devils. But if God be for you, who can be against you? Are all of them stronger than God? O be not weary in well doing! Go on, in the name of God and in the power of His might, till even American slavery shall vanish away before it.' Wesley died six days later. Wilberforce fought for 42 more years. Three days before his death, slavery was abolished in Britain. Eventually, it was abolished in America too. Hang in there - what God has in store for you is worth any price you have to pay.

Samuel Crowther

In the last post I mentioned that Adjai Crowther was one of the first students to be educated at Fourah Bay College in Freetown. His story shows the fascinating interaction between the United Kingdom and West Africa two hundred years ago. At that time Freetown, founded as a home for liberated slaves in 1787, was also home to the British Navy because of its fine natural harbour. The West Africa Squadron liberated Samuel Crowther from a slave ship in 1822.

Adjai was born in Nigeria in about 1809 and when only 12 or 13 was kidnapped along with his mother and sister and  his entire village, by Muslim Fulani slave raiders. They never knew whether his father and other relatives were killed or captured. After being separated from his remaining family, Adjai was sold to Portuguese slavers. He was placed on a slave ship to be transported, but before the ship left port it was detained by HMS Myrmidon of the West Africa Squadron.

Liberated slaves arriving in Freetown

Adjai and many others were rescued and taken to Freetown, where he was educated at a missionary school for several years. On the 11th December 1825, he was baptised and took the name of Samuel Crowther.

Samuel had a gift for languages and learnt to speak English fluently; he also studied Greek, Latin and Temne, the major language in the North of Sierra Leone. In 1826 he attended Islington Parish School in London for a year, and then returned to study as a teacher at Fourah Bay, later joining the staff. He met another schoolteacher, Asano Susan, who had been rescued from the same ship as himself, and would later become his wife.

In 1841 he became a missionary on the Niger, but soon returned to London to train as a Minister. He was ordained by the Bishop of London in 1843 and returned to Africa to open a mission of his own in Abeokuta, Nigeria. Here he translated the Bible into Yoruba, wrote a Yoruba dictionary and published several books of his own on African languages.

In 1864, Samuel Crowther was ordained in Canterbury Cathedral as the first African Bishop of the Niger. Among those at the service was Sir Henry Leeke, the captain of the ship that had rescued him forty-two years earlier.  The same year he also received the degree of  Doctor of Divinity from Oxford University. He died on the 31st December 1891.

Samuel Crowther with his son, Dandeson.

The curator of a 2008 exhibition about Crowther in Islington commented on his importance. Cheryl Smith acknowledged, "Not only did he have to endure the traumatic aftermath of being captured by slave traders and separated from his family, but he was obviously a highly intellectual and spiritual person who achieved great things within the Church and followed through his convictions. He experienced and achieved so much in his life."