Vice President of the Republic of Sierra Leone, Dr. Mohamed Juldeh Jalloh has participated in the African Union high-level round table discussions on ‘Addressing Malnutrition: Catalysing Africa’s Transformation Through Enhanced Multi-Sectoral Investments’.
At the ongoing 37th Ordinary Session of the African Union (AU) Summit, the Hon. Vice President shared his government and country’s experiences over the years, “particularly the innovative interventions to address malnutrition and scale up nutrition in Sierra Leone”.
The Global Nutrition Report for 2022 states that Sierra Leone is ‘on course’ to meet one of the global nutrition targets for which there was sufficient data to assess progress. The country is also on course to meet the target for maternal, infant, and young child nutrition.
“Sierra Leone is ‘on course’ for the exclusive breastfeeding target, with 54.0% of infants aged 0 to 5 months exclusively breastfed. Sierra Leone has made some progress towards achieving the target for stunting, but 26.3% of children under 5 years of age are still affected, which is lower than the average for the Africa region (30.7%),” the report states.
Vice President Juldeh Jalloh told the session that his country was also applauded, specifically for the government’s initiatives to create a dedicated budget line for nutrition, and the use of a Multi-Sectoral Information Strategy and Digital Dashboard which was introduced to inform and guide policy decisions and actions.
“I also underlined how nutrition has been vital to our success to improve maternal and infant health,” he wrote on his social media platforms, apparently referring to the World Health Organization’s recent congratulatory message to the government of President Julius Maada Bio on becoming the biggest success story in the maternal mortality ratio per 100,000 live births in Africa.
The integrated African health observatory report released in March 2023, revealed that the West African nation was among the top three countries in Africa with high maternal mortality rates in 2017 with 1,120 deaths per 100,000 live births. In 2020, it dropped by nearly 60%, that is 443 deaths per 100,000 live births.
“Sierra Leone used to be one of the countries with the highest maternal mortality, which it has moved away from. In this year’s estimation [2023] that we have released recently, Sierra Leone was the number one country. You are at the top for reducing most deaths by 60 percent in the region. None was comparing to your country,” said the WHO Rep, when he visited State House in April last year.
