While the lifetime risk of a woman dying during pregnancy or childbirth in the country improved from 1 in 20 in 2010 to roughly 1 in 74 in 2025, rates remain among the highest globally.
Pregnant women from more than 50 villages spend their final weeks of pregnancy and recover at RHCI’s Mbao-mi Mother’s Waiting Home.
Breakthroughs
Vaccine Access
RHCI partners with local health centers to distribute vaccines throughout the Tikonko Chiefdom.
- RHCI provides transportation and assists in the distribution of insecticide-treated bed nets, Vitamin A, and deworming medication.
- In 2023, RHCI embarked on a program in partnership with the local health clinics to find and update children who are behind on their immunizations and preventive treatments.
- Since 2025, RHCI has been instrumental in providing the transportation and services for the malaria vaccine (RTS) to expand its coverage.
Sierra Leone obtains the vast majority of its vaccines through international global health partnerships and pooled procurement mechanisms, primarily Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, UNICEF, and the World Health Organization.
- The government (Sierra Leone Ministry of Health) works through its Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI) to distribute these.
- RHCI partners with the government clinics to ensure vaccine distribution to all children.
Over 12,000 Child Health Encounters each year
RHCI’s motorbikes and four 4-wheel-drive trucks transport health care workers, critical patients, pregnant and postpartum mothers and babies, medicines, and supplies to the villages in the Tikonko Chiefdom.
- Since the Mobile Outreach Clinic opened in October 2015, this service has successfully improved the lives of tens of thousands of children.
- Sixteen villages are currently served by the Mobile Outreach Clinics.
- In addition, RHCI provides support to two remote peripheral health units (Sembehun Tarbema and Kassama).
- Bringing medical services out to the residents in remote villages has saved many lives.
Tikonko Chiefdom’s unmaintained, dirt roads and miles of footpaths greatly restrict transportation and health care access.
Over 100 Community Health Workers
Over 100 Community Health Workers live in and serve the villages in Tikonko Chiefdom.
- RHCI partnered with Midwives on Missions of Services (MOMS) to transition over 100 traditional birth attendants into higher-skilled community health workers (CHWs) with month-long trainings in 2015, 2019, 2020, and 2025.
- Other trainings have included Helping Babies Breathe and Essential Care for Every Baby.
- Community health workers have received training on Child Malnutrition prevention, detection, and treatment.
- An additional training was also held to train the CHWs to assist the Newborn Home visit nurses, to recognize the danger signs in newborns and to make appropriate referrals to the health center for care.
- A group of Government Community Health Workers have been re-trained and equipped by RHCI through Rotary grant funding to test and treat for malaria in their own villages.
5 Farmed Acres
- RHCI’s agricultural plot harvests vegetables, bananas, pawpaw fruit, pineapple, peppers, sweet potatoes, greens, onions, tomatoes and other produce to feed the mothers and staff at the Mbao-mi Mothers’ Home.
- Major advancements are in progress using best agriculture practices to increase production of crops that are high in protein.
- RHCI has partnered with Njala University Agriculture Program and is aiming to be a demonstration site for the local farmers to learn ways to increase crop yield.
- Women staying at Mbao-mi also receive agriculture education to bring back to their farms.
- RHCI continues to provide resources to two Farm Based Organizations, in the remote villages of Kpetkuma and Julian.
Approach
60 years = the average lifespan
Poverty, food insecurity, isolation, and lack of transportation combine to destabilize families and promote disease. As always, women and children are the hardest hit.
Public health. Community partnerships.
RHCI provides public health expertise and investments to promote community-based health solutions that advance Tikonko Chiefdom’s existing maternal and child health services.
Before RHCI, pregnant women in labor walked hours—day and night, in rain and heat —to access labor and delivery facilities at the local Community Health Centers.
Babies born along the way and mothers with complications didn’t survive. With RHCI’s Mbao-mi Mother’s Home and Gondama Birth Waiting Home, mothers make the trip in advance of labor and receive medical supervision, education services, nutritious food, and transportation to delivery facilities.
RHCI’s Children’s Health Program works to protect each child against malnutrition, malaria and other common infections. Food and nutrition programs strive to increase food sourcing.
