Sierra Leone has unveiled a radical new scheme to tackle its spiralling health crisis by offering free health care to pregnant women and children at a conference in London.

President Ernest Bai Koroma has implored the international community to help fund his ambitious ‘New Health Plan’ in his key note speech to the Sierra Leone Investment and Donor Conference in London. It is hoped that the £20m scheme could bring public health in the West African nation out of a state of emergency.

Sierra Leone ranks among the lowest in the world on the Human Development Index, second only to war torn Afghanistan, with the highest maternal mortality rate in the world and one in five children dying before their first birthday.

Poverty is extreme, with six out of 10 people unable to afford one meal a day, and medical fees are prohibitively expensive, with patients facing the equivalent of 25 days’ income for a simple doctors’ consultation.

The Government has struggled to improve the parlous condition of public health to no avail since the end of Sierra Leone’s devastating civil war in 2001, but international aid workers believe the New Health Plan could revolutionise the country’s health system.

Beverley Collin, a health-policy adviser at the international medical aid organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), hailed the president’s expected announcement as an “extremely important development”.

“It is hugely encouraging and quite brave that the president has taken this step because the country is just pulling itself out of quite horrific circumstances,” she said.

“Most governments around the world need to set up a system that guarantees health care access for everyone, including the most vulnerable.

“Charging for health care makes it almost impossible for the most vulnerable to access it, so this will really improve the situation in Sierra Leone.

” The Investment and Donor Conference brought together Government officials from Sierra Leone with donors including the British Department for International Development (DFID), the World Bank and the EU Commission. President Bai Koroma now hopes to secure a significant increase in aid donations to the country after he set out his visible health plan at the conference.

Ms Collin appealed to national governments to dig as deep as necessary to help fund the radical scheme.

“The president needs to raise £20m, which is not beyond the bounds of possibility in terms of international aid budgets.

We are hoping donors will pledge new money top help support this idea’, she said.

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