FREETOWN: Sierra Leone has recruited 110 foreign doctors to improve medical services, practically doubling the number of doctors working in government hospitals, the Health Minister Soccoh Kabia said Friday.
Thirty of the doctors will be coming from Nigeria and 50 from Cuba the minister said adding that another 30 physicians would come from Egypt.
Already the ministry is working in collaboration with the foreign ministry to make arrangement for the doctors arrival, Kabia told reporters.
The new medical personnel are expected between September and the end of this year.
The influx of foreign practitioners will practically double the number of doctors working in government hospitals from 120 to 230, according to health ministry figures.
Sierra Leone, a country of 5.9 million inhabitants, currently has only six surgeons, three pediatricians and eight gynecologists.The West African country is struggling to recover from a decade long civil
war which ended in 2001. An estimated 120,000 people were killed and thousands had their limbs hacked off by rebel fighters trying to overthrow the government. -AFP
