The Ag Commissioner of the Anti Corruption Commission, Morlai Buya-Kamara has confirmed to Awoko that two men and one woman have been nabbed in Kambia for allegedly stealing drugs meant for the partial free health care. He said the three had been brought to Freetown and are being held in custody.
Buya-Kamara said two cartoons of Paracetamol syrup, linked with the three people, were now in the possession of the commission and the suspects would be prosecuted in the coming weeks. The Director of Medical Stores is expected to certify the seized drugs today. Once the three are charged it would make true a promise by the ACC that anyone caught even with one Paracetamol stolen from the health care initiative would be prosecuted. The arrested three have allegedly told investigators that they got the drugs from an unnamed medical doctor.
The arrests come amid complaints that the free health care drugs are being sold by some medical practitioners and their surrogates. There are also reports, even if unconfirmed, that people are streaming into the country from neighbouring Guinea to benefit from the free health care in border towns.
The partial free health care under which pregnant women, breast-feeding mothers and children under 5 years are to get free medicines and treatment at public hospitals, was introduced in April this year by President Ernest Bai Koroma. While women and children have been streaming into hospitals to benefit from it and as a result have overstretched medics, many say some remote rural areas are not benefitting from it because of the inadequate monitoring.
In a report released yesterday ahead of the UN meeting on the millennium development goals later this month, Save The Children ranks Sierra Leone as one of the worst two countries in the world for a child to be born. An official of the organisation told a foreign media journalist in Freetown that one in four children born in the country dies before they are five years. All hopes are pinned on the effective implementation of the free health care to turn things around.