The government has signed binding agreements with construction firms to finish long-delayed tertiary hospitals in Freetown and build an oxygen facility, while announcing an ambitious plan to establish the country’s first cancer diagnostic centre on a 300-acre site outside the capital.
In what the government is calling a landmark moment for the country’s battered public health system, Sierra Leone has secured $4.3 million for the completion of three long-stalled tertiary hospitals in Freetown and for the construction of a medical oxygen production facility at Kerry Town a site the Ministry of Health now intends to develop into a fully integrated Medical City.
The announcement, made by the Ministry of Health through its official channels on 16th May 2026, was accompanied by the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between Finance Minister Sheku Ahmed Fantamadi Bangura, Health Minister Austin Demby PhD MPH, the construction companies engaged to carry out the work, and the supervisory consultant appointed to oversee its completion. The signing of the MOU signals a formal, time-bound commitment to finish work on three hospitals at Lumley, Macauley Street, and Waterloo before the end of the year.
The three hospitals have occupied a complex place in Sierra Leone’s institutional memory. The Macauley Street facility is a 60-bed, four-storey building; Lumley is designed to hold 85 beds across five storeys; and Waterloo is a four-storey structure with a planned capacity of 100 beds. Each was conceived to serve the wider communities in its catchment area and beyond. Each has remained incomplete for far longer than any government has been comfortable acknowledging.
The $4.3 million injection is intended not only to push construction to its conclusion but to bring proper supervisory oversight to the final phase a detail that carries weight in a country where infrastructure projects have frequently suffered from poor contractor accountability and limited independent monitoring.
Alongside the three hospitals, the funds will cover the construction of a medical oxygen production facility at Kerry Town, on the western outskirts of Freetown. Access to reliable medical oxygen has long been a critical vulnerability in Sierra Leone’s hospital system. The broader challenge of ensuring stable, sustainable medical oxygen supply to patients in Sierra Leone has drawn attention from international health bodies in recent years, with the country’s fragile and intermittent power grid consistently undermining hospital-based oxygen systems. A dedicated production facility represents a structural solution to a problem that frontline medical staff have managed through workarounds for years.
But it is the longer-term vision behind the Kerry Town site that gives this announcement its most consequential dimension.
The Ministry of Health has confirmed plans to establish a Medical City on the 300-acre land at Kerry Town a development that, if realised, would represent the most ambitious transformation of Sierra Leone’s healthcare infrastructure in the country’s post-independence history. As part of the MOU signed on Friday, a perimeter fence will be constructed to protect and demarcate the full extent of the land, securing it against encroachment while construction planning proceeds.
The Medical City vision includes the construction of a modern hospital on the Kerry Town site, the establishment of Sierra Leone’s first cancer diagnostic centre equipped with state-of-the-art technology supported by the International Atomic Energy Agency a pharma-grade warehouse funded by the Global Fund, and an oxygen manufacturing plant. World Vision is also listed among the partners supporting the warehouse facility.
The IAEA’s involvement in the cancer diagnostic component is significant. Sierra Leone has been working towards establishing a radiotherapy facility at Kerry Town for some time, with feasibility studies and geotechnical surveys of the site already carried out. The country has mobilised some financial resources for the construction of the facility and for the acquisition of radiotherapy equipment, though more funding has consistently been needed. The inclusion of the cancer centre within the broader Medical City framework suggests that momentum on that front is now being tied to a larger, better-resourced project architecture.
Cancer has for too long been a near-invisible crisis in Sierra Leone’s public health landscape not because it is rare, but because the country has lacked the infrastructure to diagnose and treat it. Patients who can afford to do so travel abroad. Those who cannot often go undiagnosed until the disease is far advanced. A Kerry Town diagnostic and treatment centre, on a 305-acre plot, has been under discussion for some time, with the minister having previously confirmed that work on the perimeter fence to secure the land was already underway.
The announcement arrives at a moment when Sierra Leone’s health system is navigating considerable pressure from multiple directions. International development funding for health programmes in Sierra Leone has been tightening, with cuts to UK aid having already affected key programmes and US funding commitments carrying their own structural conditions. The country’s health sector, according to WHO, is at a critical juncture, with long-standing structural and operational challenges affecting more than 50 secondary and tertiary hospitals across the country.
Against that backdrop, a government-financed, domestically driven commitment to complete three hospitals and begin building toward a Medical City carries genuine significance though Sierra Leoneans have learned, from long experience, to hold such announcements at a careful distance until the buildings stand.
Read Also: “The Kush Was for Safe Keeping,” Convict Tells High Court Then Gets 30 Years
The MOU signed on Friday is, in that sense, both a cause for measured optimism and a test of institutional will. The contractors are bound. The ministers have put their signatures to paper. The year-end deadline is explicit. What happens next on those three construction sites and on the 300 acres at Kerry Town will be watched closely.
