Our Story So Far
It all began...
... when a trustee and a former trustee travelled to Sierra Leone to work as volunteer medical doctors for one year at Makeni Government Hospital. With support from Makeni Hospital Management Team, they helped to open a small clinical library in 2013. This was opened in response to the lack of access to reference materials available to hospital staff.
Health workers need access to up-to-date information to be able to provide consistent high-quality healthcare to their patients. However, in many hospitals, access to health information is poor. Hospital libraries provide free access to life saving educational resources for staff and students.
Since then...
We now support eight healthcare libraries in Sierra Leone!
Our libraries combine:
1) partnership with the hospital management team
2) high quality educational resources
3) a robust borrowing system
4) a committed library administrator
5) systems for monitoring and evaluation.
We currently employ five AHL staff members in Sierra Leone, and have four trustees (unpaid): three in the UK, and one in Sierra Leone. You can meet the team here:
Looking ahead...
Our evaluation data have shown the value of the libraries to hospital staff and clinical students. Find our borrowing data on the individual library pages.
The work of African Hospital Libraries supports the strengthening and growth of health information and libraries services in Sierra Leone.
We would love you to join us in this journey: see our Get Involved! pages, and contact us!