Mattru Jong - Hospital

Hospital

Mattru Hospital was founded as a dispensary in 1950 by missionary nurses from the United Brethren in Christ (UBC). By 1959 the dispensary had become a 15-bed hospital. The hospital continued to grow in capacity during the 1960s and 1970s, and by 1981 Mattru Hospital had grown to 69 beds, with pediatrics, obstetrics, surgical, and outpatient units, and x-ray and laboratory facilities.

In 1994 the hospital was shut down because of the threat of civil war violence, and international personnel working in the hospital were evacuated from the country. The hospital was destroyed by Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels during the war.

After the war, Mattru Hospital was rebuilt and reopened by Doctors Without Borders in 2001. They turned the hospital over to the UBC's Sierra Leone Conference in 2002.

In October 2009 the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) provided funding through the office of Sierra Leone's First Lady, Sia Nyama Koroma to refurbish and "re-brand" the hospital as a "centre of excellence."

On March 31, 2010 President Ernest Bai Koroma visited Mattru Jong Hospital in order to assess its preparedness for the planned April 27, 2010 rollout of free medical services for pregnant women, lactating mothers, and children under the age of five. Staffing, electricity supply and confusion over the hospital's funding status (as a part mission-, part government-run entity) were seen as the major challenges to the hospital's effectiveness.