Training of health personnel in Sierra Leone for primary health care

Sierra Leone; like many African countries; has experienced considerable delay in implementing programmes geared towards the achievement of health for all by the year 2000 through primary health care. There is widespread dissatisfaction towards health care delivery not only as a result of inadequate financing but also due to the general incompetence of health personnel to meet new challenges. A primary health care policy calls for the the training of health personnel of all types and in numbers to meet the needs of the entire country. Training is thus regarded as a priority intervention to meet these challenge. A guideline to relate education and training innovations to the elements of primary care is presented

The need for a training programme in community-oriented education for health personnel in Sierra Leone

There is a pressing need for a community-oriented medical training in Sierra Leone to cope with the country's health problems. To enable a community-oriented training programme to be succesfully implemented; it is first necessary to clarify the basic concepts of a community-oriented training programme in order to remove some misconceptions. The following is therefore an attempt aimed at clarifying the situation by giving a brief backgroung to the health needs of Sierra Leone followed by a definition of community-oriented medical education