Dr Abubakarr Fofanah, Minister of Health and Sanitation: 

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"The gains we had made in improving health care for women and children through the Free Health Care Initiative were suddenly reversed in 2014 as Ebola struck the country. The tragic loss of healthcare workers’ lives during the crisis only made the situation worse. 

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"During the Early Recovery period, we restored basic services. Now we must work rapidly to create a health service that will stop pregnant women and children from dying needlessly and that will keep Sierra Leoneans safe and secure from disease outbreaks. 

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"Our plans aim to save the lives of 600 more women and 5,000 more children. We are focusing on access and services at the community level, rolling out an enhanced Community Health Worker (CHW) programme that will support pregnant women to access services and deliver essential drugs such as malaria treatment to children. This new programme will ensure that no Sierra Leonean will find themselves more than 5km from a health worker. 

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"By mid-2017, no health facilities should have stock outs of essential drugs. Twenty-nine facilities to care for pregnant women and newborn babies (25 ‘basic’ and 4 ‘comprehensive’ facilities) will be brought up to proper standards, including sanitation and hygiene facilities.

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"Ebola cost the lives of almost 4,000 Sierra Leoneans. The health system we build now will not let that happen again. We will work to improve community sanitation, hygiene, and/or solid waste management in Freetown, Makeni and Kenema, 400 rural communities and four small towns. Health facilities will benefit from strengthened ‘water, sanitation, hygiene’ and ‘infection prevention and control’ procedures and we will continue to improve data collection and surveillance systems to ensure that new disease out-breaks are picked up and responded to quickly."