Freetown, Sierra Leone: Prioritizing food security and nutrition standards
The Partnership for Healthy Cities supported the city in developing targeted risk communication for specific urban audiences.
Overview
Published: October 2020
Leveraging lessons from their experiences during the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak, the capital city of Sierra Leone, Freetown, has been providing its most vulnerable residents with food packages so they can stay safe and healthy in quarantine.
“Food insecurity is a risk to COVID-19 containment because people can’t stay home if they have nothing to eat. On top of that, the pandemic has made access to high-quality nutrition even more difficult than usual,” says Mayor Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr. “That’s why the Freetown City Council has been working with partners to bring healthy, nutritious food to its citizens during the pandemic.”
Around 30% of Freetown’s 1.2 million residents have an available family income of less than 1 USD per day and 47% do not have direct access to running water. In Sierra Leone, the sheer scale of the food insecurity challenge was highlighted in a national survey carried out in April, where only 12% of respondents answered they could gather food for one week or more, while 60% said they could not sustain ‘lockdown’ or movement restrictions for more than three days at a time.
As a member of the Partnership for Healthy Cities – a global initiative by Bloomberg Philanthropies, the World Health Organization and Vital Strategies – Freetown has also shared early experiences and lessons learned during the pandemic response with other cities in the region and globally.
Read the full case study: Freetown tackles a dual challenge to protect its citizens from COVID-19 amidst food insecurity
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