Sierra Leone: Unfulfilled promise of free maternal health care

Marie Musa, 37, is devastated. After the mother of four gave premature birth, her baby boy died a few hours later - because the hospital did not have enough incubators to rescue the infant. In August, the same month that Musa’s baby died in hospital, James Bamie Davies, commissioner of the customs and excise department of Sierra Leone’s National Revenue Authority (NRA), announced in a government gazette an auction of medical appliances, including eight incubators. One in five children die before they reach the age of five in Sierra Leone, and one in eight women die during childbirth, according to the 2008 United Nations Human Development Index.