We collaborate by educating and empowering healthcare workers with evidence-based surgical and anesthesia practices that strengthen surgical capacity. We live our core values by providing free life-changing surgical care with respect for human dignity. We respect our partners and volunteers.

SLI is unique in its approach in supplementing the healthcare sector in Sierra Leone primarily because Knowledge Transfer is a cornerstone of the organization. The focus of knowledge transfer is simply because the inadequacies of the healthcare sector in Sierra Leone could not be fixed with episodic surgical missions alone and as a result, SLI has developed and is implementing training programs to increase the capacity of the local medical professionals through classroom and patient bedside training sessions.

The bedside training sessions are based on informal counterpart exchanges between the volunteers and the Sierra Leonean medical professionals. The formal classroom training sessions are facilitated routinely and based on as need basis. Also for all equipment and supplies donated, we ensure that we accompany the donations with technical assistance that is associated with the installation, maintenance and the relevant training of local technicians.

It is vital that training is the focus of our services primarily because it ensures sustainability and a continued quality healthcare delivery system long after the surgical missions have left and in addition SLI maintains a very high standard in financial accountability and transparency.

Sierra Leone is one of the world’s poorest countries and ranked 177 out of 186 countries in the United Nation’s Human Development Index. It has an average life expectancy of just 48 years. Annual government expenditure in the health care sector is approximately 3% which puts the government in an unenviable position of not being able to provide adequate and quality health care service to its citizens. The state of the health care system in Sierra Leone is in a bad shape and has been so for a very long time.

The doctor to patient ratio is abysmally low, one in four children die before they reach the age of five and being pregnant is almost equivalent to a death sentence not to talk of the deaths of it’s citizens from curable ailments. The health care system is primarily staffed by 136 doctors i.e. 0.2 doctors per 10,000 people for a population of approximately 7 million people); 1,017 nurses and
midwives and 114 pharmacists (Source: AfriDev.Info).