By Ibrahim Kabba Turay
The United Nations (UN) in Sierra Leone has stated in their 2022 annual results report presentation to the media at their head office in Freetown that maternal morality death dropped by 10% in 2022.
While presenting on the access to basic services, Deputy Country Representative UNFPA, Sibeso Muluma, said during the period under review, 10% reduction in the number of maternal death in the country was recorded through the maternal death surveillance and response system.
“The 2000-2020 UN trend analysis on maternal mortality showed that Sierra Leone had reduced the maternal mortality ratio from 507 to 443 in 2022,” she stated.
She said Sierra Leone still has the highest proportion of under-5 death with over 70% of all death occurring in children aged 1-59 months, also stated that the recent analysis indicates shown that Sierra Leone Is one of the 54 countries requiring urgent accretion of efforts to achieve the SDG 2030 target on child mortality 25 per 1,000.
“With the UN support key intervention were undertaken to address this situation in 2022 including 10,915 children benefitted from special care baby unit services with a survival rate of 87% to reduce child morality,” said Sibeso Muluma.
“A total of 3,601,150 under-5- children in 2022 benefitted from integrated management of childhood illnesses services, integrated community case management and integrated management of neonatal and childhood illness.”
She said in the area of children, adolescents young women and youth have increased access to comprehensive quality education service with improved learning outcomes, noting that Sierra Leone has achieved significant progress in education access, equity, and quality through the free quality school education program since its launch in 2018.
She further stated that with focus on marginalised children and early learners, results achieved in 2022 have shown that gross enrolment rate of pre-primary education increased to 24% in 2022 from 20.6% in the previous year and doubled compared to the baseline of 12%.
“Transition rate between primary and lower secondary education increased to 120% from 97% and primary gross completion rate increased from 79.6% to 95%, showing significant progress towards achieving country program targets”
She added that the in the area of the vaccination, Sierra Leone achieved 73.2% full vaccination coverage of the target population for Covid-19 and also covered over 80% of 10 years old school going children with the HPV vaccine to prevent cervical cancer.
She concluded that they will able to improve access to renewable energy in rural areas, and that in 2022 the UN supported the people of Sierra Leone to access increased clean and renewable energy in rural areas following the ratification of Mini-grid regulations in 2020.
