By Mabinty M. Kamara
The African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC), an Independent Research Institution based in Kenya, in partnership with Statistics Sierra Leone, have announced that a proposed survey on safe abortion in Sierra Leone will start in May this year.
The revelation was made on Wednesday at a stakeholders’ conference held to discuss and understand common problems associated with abortion in the country.
The participants in the discussion were drawn from the media, civil society, rights groups, organizations working on reproductive health, as well as officials from relevant government ministries, departments and agencies.
Boniface Ushie, a Senior Researcher with APHRC, said that the project was a multi-country initiative, bringing together Sierra Leone, Kenya, Malawi, Zambia, Burkina Faso, Rwanda, and Liberia in which countries the organization operates. He said they implemented the CPSE project with specific focus on one of the layers, which is Access to Safe Abortion. The other two layers of the CPSE project are Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) and Marginalized groups, Ushie said.
He went on to say that his institution chose Sierra Leone for the study out of many other countries because they knew that such a research was needed and necessary, given its battle against maternal mortality.
“We didn’t just randomly choose Sierra Leone as one of the countries to be researched. There are other factors that pushed us to select Sierra Leone as one of the countries for the research. I am sure that for many Sierra Leoneans and those who work in the sexual and reproductive health sector, this information will be close to you. It is a fact that Sierra Leone has one of the world’s highest Maternal Mortality rates. There might be a number of reasons responsible for this high maternal mortality rate, some of them could be the fact that our infrastructures are not well developed as in other countries, but also the fact that there are other contributing factors that will be discussed in the project,” he said.
“We hope that this study will contribute to changes so that we don’t have these statistics in Sierra Leone,” he added, noting that there was a high rate of unsafe abortion, even though many parts of Africa criminalize it.
The study will target women across Sierra Leone who visit health centers, both public and private facilities, to access abortion and post abortion care within the one month period under review.
During discussions and consultation with the stakeholders on the proposed study, a lot of concerns were raised about the acceptability of the research topic, considering the controversy surrounding the proposed 2015 Safe Abortion Act.
Stakeholders suggested a change of name for the research.
Dr. Bernadette Lahai, a former Member of Parliament and a strong backer of the 2015 Safe Abortion Bill, said that the upcoming research was timely for Sierra Leone and that she was optimistic that whatever result is derived from it would bring a change in policy about abortion.
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