Sierra Leone

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone, Monday 2 May, 2016// -- President Dr Ernest Bai Koroma has launched the National Employment Policy and Strategy and Implementation Plan for 2015-2018 at the Miatta Conference Hall, Brookfields in Freetown. The National Employment Policy is a policy response towards addressing and improving labor relations and conditions of service of workers in Sierra Leone.

During a grand ceremony to commemorate International Labour Day, the president said the launch of the new employment policy has clearly shown his government’s commitment and effectiveness in addressing labour issues in the country. He stated that government is part of labour congress and that is why programmes and policies under his administration are always directed towards the protection of the ordinary man, adding that government has come reasonably far to formalizing the informal sector. 

By Dr. Kolleh A Bangura

To assist Sierra Leone protected areas in building their resilience to climate change, the PARCC (Protected Areas Resilience to Climate Change) project has assessed future climate impacts of land use change on ecosystem services in Sierra Leone. This includes applying five spatially detailed regional climate model projections developed for the project and scenarios of future land use change.

This article summarizes the main features of projected climate impacts on ecosystem services and their implications for focus project areas in Sierra Leone and future national planning. Findings from the latest annual assessment report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are referred to in order to provide guidance on the way to interpret these results.

Climate Projections

The projections for mean annual temperature in Sierra Leone for the end of the 21st century are for significant increases (with very high confidence):

By Finbarr O'Reilly May. 2, 2016

When she went into labor last November, 18-year-old Kema James climbed onto the back of a motorbike taxi in her village in eastern Sierra Leone and rode half an hour to the main government hospital in the nearby city of Kenema.

When her baby was delivered, he was sickly yellow and stricken with sepsis, an ailment caused by bacteria in the blood, and he hung limply in the hands of the hospital staff. He died five days later before he could be named.

Source: World Health Organization - Credit: Michaeleen Doucleff and Alyson Hurt/NPR

CLICK HERE - RESEARCH - Reduced evolutionary rate in reemerged Ebola virus transmission chains

The West African countries at the center of the epidemic have had flareups even after being declared Ebola-free by the World Health Organization.

npr.org - by Michaeleen Doucleff - April 29, 2016

Just when health officials think the Ebola outbreak is over in West Africa, the virus pops up again seemingly out of the blue. It's happened at least five times so far.

Now scientists are starting to figure out why: The virus can lay dormant in a survivor for more than year and then re-emerge to infect others.