Our Work
The Welbodi Partnership provides funding and facilitation to help the Ola During Children's Hospital deliver quality services to its patients.
We do not set the hospital's agenda, but work collaboratively with the hospital management and staff and with the Ministry of Health and Sanitation to identify priorities and develop solutions.
Why this hospital?
We believe that a paediatric centre of excellence will help address many of the barriers to accessible and high-quality care, enabling both local and systemic improvement, in the hospital itself and throughout Sierra Leone. The children's hospital is uniquely situated to have this kind of system-wide impact while providing quality care to a large number of very needy children.
Our priorities are to:
- Provide in-service training for existing medical and non-medical hospital personnel
- Strengthen the children's hospital as a training institution
- Foster a culture of professional and efficient management
- Ensure the children's hospital has the necessary equipment and supplies to provide quality care and effective training
In the long term we believe our work will have a broader impact on health care provision in Sierra Leone because:
- Every student doctor does their paediatric rotations at the Ola During Children's Hospital
- Training programmes developed at the children's hospital will be shared with other health facilities and training institutions
- Staff trained at the children's hospital will be dispatched to work in health facilities across Sierra Leone
- The children's hospital will set an example that effective and efficient health care delivery is possible in a government hospital in Sierra Leone
Our local partnerships set us apart from other programs
One of our key accomplishments has been the establishment, in partnership with the children's hospital and the Ministry of Health and Sanitation, of the Sierra Leone Institute for Child Health (SLICH), which forms part of the Government of Sierra Leone's strategic plan for Reproductive and Child Health.
SLICH serves as a funding and oversight board for the children's hospital, and provides a mechanism for the Welbodi Partnership and our local partners to decide together how to improve the hospital. The hospital staff and management generate both an annual plan and quarterly projects for which they need funding or other support. These plans and projects are reviewed by the SLICH board, comprising representatives from the Ministry of Health and Sanitation, the children's hospital, and the Welbodi Partnership, and are funded by the Welbodi Partnership and our donors when the government resources are not sufficient. This board also reviews the monitoring, evaluation, and financial reporting related to these projects.
The development and improvement of the hospital is thus led by those on the ground, and supported by policymakers in government. The process ensures that the limited resources available are used in the best possible way, and helps build the capacity of the hospital management to both propose and implement needed changes, which is crucial to make changes sustainable.