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By Washington Tumay Watson
Liberia-Liberia’s Health Minister Dr. Louise Kpoto and a team from the Ministry of Health have embarked on counties tour in the southeast of Liberia, beginning with Grand Gedeh County where they are expected to access and monitor all district health centers and hospitals to obtain firsthand information concerning the constraints the sector is facing.
Reports from Grand Gedeh quoted the Minister as revealing that the team, in spite of the difficult terrains, covered all of the health districts and interacted with the medical practitioners, staff and patients.
Minister Kpoto told reporters that the tour is part of her vision to improve the country’s health sector which has been experiencing serious challenges in meeting the needs of the people, especially in rural Liberia.
The Health Minister also disclosed the tour is in fulfillment of commitment made upon her appointment by President Joesph Boakai to undertake drastic transformation at the Ministry of Health, adding southeast tour will take them to Grand Kru, Maryland, and River Gee Counties, among others.
Recalled that former United States Ambassador Michael McCarthy alarmed over alleged corruption in the health sector of the country following his tour of several counties in rural Liberia, during the administration of former President George Weah.
Apparently taking cue from the Ambassador McCarthy’s revelation as well as other reports of poor health care delivery system, President Boakai, as Presidential Candidate, vowed to improve the health sector, though he did not consider health in the ARREST Agenda, the government’s development roadmap.
“The past three weeks, I visited Bomi, Gbarpolu, and four counties in the Southeast, and I have now been to every county in Liberia. This fulfills my promise to the U.S. Congress to be an ambassador to all of Liberia, not just Monrovia. I am happy to report that each capital city has its own unique bundle of trade and cultural ties, and that Liberians throughout the country share a warm, welcoming spirit,’’ he reported then.
He further stated: “Unfortunately, on the trip, I was startled and deeply troubled to encounter multiple county hospitals that received not one penny of what they were promised in the 2022 budget. Hospitals on which lives depend, where outbreaks are prevented and suffering is alleviated, did not receive any portion of the US$100,000 or more appropriated by the legislature for them to operate.
“As reported in the press last week with Tellowoyan Memorial Hospital in Lofa County, these facilities currently survive on the backs of incredibly dedicated health professionals, making do with whatever they can scrape together. Lest you think this is the work of one political party, that notion was quickly dispelled by Liberians I talked to”.
“The blocking of resources is so complete that it must be institutional: and the lack of any alarm being raised indicates a syndicate involving players at the legislature,” the Ministry of Health, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In one town, administrators look with anticipation mixed with fear at the brand-new, modern hospital that sits vacant, knowing that they can barely keep the existing makeshift facility going, and running the new one will require ten times the resources.,” the former US envoy observed.
He disclosed at the time that the United States Government was about to spend a total of over US$40 million constructing Liberia’s state-of-the-art National Reference Laboratory (NRL) that, when completed, will require US$3 million to US$4 million a year from the Government of Liberia to operate.
He added: “If the Government is failing to deliver statutory appropriations of only US$100,000 to existing hospitals, why would we ever trust annual pledges of US$3 million for the future NRL”?
