By Kemo Cham
Health Alert Sierra Leone on Thursday June 6, convened its first inaugural meeting with members of parliament constituting the Country Level Caucus for sustainable Health Financing and Immunization.
The parliamentary caucus is meant to serve as a platform of champions advocating for increased domestic financing for health in general and immunization in particular in Sierra Leone. It the result of an initiative funded by the global vaccine alliance, GAVI through the Global Health Advocacy Incubator (GHAI), with the goal of increasing domestically mobilised revenue in countries heavily reliant on donor funding for their health needs.
Thursday’s meeting held in the conference hall of the Council of Churches Sierra Leone (CCSL) brought together 10 lawmakers drawn from strategic oversight committees in the House of Representatives led by the Parliamentary Committee on Health, as well civil society representatives and the media. The objective of the meeting, according to Victor Lansana Koroma, Executive Director of Health Alert, was to discuss the Terms of Reference (TOR) and the effective functioning of the Caucus. Participants also discussed the plans for the coalition.
This meeting follows several engagements, both locally and internationally, geared towards enlisting lawmakers and other influential stakeholders in the health sector to lobby governments to increase funding for health, particular primary healthcare and immunization. One such engagement took place in Istanbul, Turkiye, where representatives from some of these donor dependent nations met in April.
Simeon Tamba Johnny, MP from Kono and Deputy Chair of the Parliamentary Oversight Committee on Health was part of the Sierra Leonean delegation in Istanbul. As chair of Thursday’s meeting, Hon. Johnny said that co-financing was a major issue discussed there.
“We all know that most of our immunization programmes are being sponsored by Gavi…Sierra Leone being the recipient of Gavi supports, it was for such countries to appeal to government to fulfil their commitment to co-financing,” he explained to the participants.
Other African countries in attendance in Istanbul included Liberia, Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory coast, Cameron and Kenya.
According to Hon. Johnny, Sierra Leone still owed a backlog of its con-financing commitment, which he said calls for concerted efforts to be addressed.
“We are here to have a network of civil society and parliamentarians to lobby government,” he said.
Health Economist Dr Gibril Njie presented a draft of the TOR and plan of actions for the Caucus, which was discussed by participants.
According to Dr Njie, the partnership between GHIA and its local partners Health Alert and Wash Net Sierra Leone, alongside lawmakers and Ministry of Health was for them to form a lobbying group to engage internally with different structures to ensure that Sierra Leone continues to meet its commitment to co-financing.
“Gavi supports with a lot of finances for vaccines. But normally for them to continue, a country has to provide a percentage contribution. That’s co-financing. Another objective is to have the countries increase their financing to immunization,” Njie explained.
“Domestic funding allocation is small and sometimes have a lot of challenges which affect procurement of vaccines. All of these lead to many zero dose children,” he stressed.
Dr Njie added that the purpose of the coalition was to influence policy and the budget processes in favour of increased financing of health and immunization.
Momoh Bockarie, a representative of the Finance Committee in Parliament, spoke about the need for the caucus to engage in aggressive campaign to achieve its goal.
“Development requires a holistic approach. No one person can do it alone,” said Hon. Bockarie, citing Sierra Leone’s failure to meet the African Union health funding target, which stands at 9 percent in 2025.
“We still have some gaps to cover,” he noted. “When we talk about health issues, we are talking about the lives of every Sierra Leonean; it doesn’t matter which political party you belong to. We should prioritize our health.”
Bernadette Wuyatta Songa, Chairperson of the Parliamentary Health Committee, who also chairs the Caucus, said its establishment was timely, coming after Gavi recognised Sierra Leone’s lead role in immunization efforts.
“That is happening because we have hard working men and women in these institutions to ensure that we meet our targets,” Hon. Songa said. “And if that is happening, as parliamentarians our role is very simple, we ensure we advocate for finance to be allocated for these activities because we have the man power, we have the expertise, we have the will power for people to ensure that we are meeting targets.”
Further stressing on the role of the coalition, Mrs Songa said: “We don’t just want to form the caucus and have it (lying about). We want to ensure that we become the voice of what we want to achieve,” she stressed.
