Introduction

According to a report from the World Health Organization, Sierra Leone has one of the highest infant mortality rates (144.33), and one of the lowest life expectancy (34 years) in the world. The ten-year rebel war destroyed over 70% of all health facilities including medical equipment. This fact, coupled with the high level of poverty, has worsened the public health problems Sierra Leone shares with many other African nations: high infant and maternal mortality, infectious diseases like malaria and dysentery, contaminated water supplies, nutritional deficiency, and more recently, AIDS.

Moreover, many of the INGOs, which rushed into Sierra Leone in the wake of the humanitarian catastrophe caused by the war are in the process of leaving, and donor interest in Sierra Leone and its health sector has begun to fade as the emergency situation recedes.

None of the facilities listed below exist in Sierra Leone:

• A Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) unit for diagnosis,
• A cat-scan unit for diagnosis.
• A Chemotherapy unit

Wealthy Sierra Leoneans can seek treatment either in more advanced African countries or overseas. But those who seek dialysis services abroad, for example, become perpetual medical refugees. The poor simply die, often after long periods of pain and suffering. The health situation in Sierra Leone is fairly representative of the health crisis in the West African sub-region. Ihsan is committed to making health care accessible to as many West African communities as possible.

Alfajr Clinic

For its first health care project and as a pilot program in 2002, Ihsan established the Alfajr Clinic in a rented facility in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Currently the clinic provides affordable healthcare for the public, trains nurses and other health workers, and runs a popular mobile clinic program, which brings health services to remote village communities, which have no other access to health care. In 2005, Ihsan initiated a project to build a new complex, the Ihsan Health Center (IHC).

The Ihsan Health Center: Mission

The Ihsan Health Center (IHC) will provide subsidized and sometimes free healthcare to the poor, while generating income by treating the affluent. The revenue, coming primarily from pharmaceutical sales, will be used to fund Ihsan’s other humanitarian projects, such as the Bilal Ibn Rabah Orphanage.

The Ihsan Health Center seeks to improve the health status of the community by reducing morbidity and mortality through:

• Affordable and easy access to quality health care.
• Training of nurses, primary care providers and midwives.
• Initiation of public health awareness programs.

IHC will include the following units:

• Outpatient facility
• Male ward (50 beds)
• Female ward (60 beds)
• Nurses’ room
• Lab
• Pharmacy
• Waiting room
• Surgery room

Project Status

IHC’s outpatient facility has nearly been completed. With the availability of funds by April 2007, the Center, including the Admissions Unit, will be inaugurated in August 2007.

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