Blog Posts

Who Does What? A Transparent Look at Our Role in Global Health

8/4/2026

When you support HCW’s work in global health, you deserve to know exactly where your investment goes, what our specific lane is, and how local experts are steering the ship. A common question we get from our dedicated donors and supporters is: What exactly is the relationship between Helping Children Worldwide (HCW) and Mercy Hospital? Are the employees at Mercy supervised by HCW? Does HCW make administrative decisions about the hospital?

We want to pull back the curtain and share a transparent look at our operations, our role, and the incredible network of allies we collaborate with to save lives.

Our "Right Lane": We Equip, They Medicate

To understand our operations, it helps to understand a core principle of ethical international development: sustainable impact must be locally led.

HCW does not run Mercy Hospital. We do not hire the staff, we do not admit patients, and we do not make clinical decisions on the ground in Bo, Sierra Leone. Mercy Hospital is completely independent, governed as an autonomous organization, and operated by a 100% Sierra Leonean medical staff Under the United Methodist Church Sierra Leone Annual Conference Health Board.

Our role is very specific: Helping Children Worldwide acts as a capacity-building ally and technical advisor, supporting hard-working healthcare providers with what they need to save lives.

Breaking Down the Support: What HCW Brings to the TableOur job is to ensure the frontline team at Mercy has the structural scaffolding required to succeed safely and efficiently. We fulfill this role through four distinct pillars:

Core Funding: We provide essential, consistent financial grants that keep the hospital's lights on, secure payroll for local staff, and make high-quality care completely free to the patients who need it most.
Technical Advising: We provide specialized advisory support to help leadership optimize hospital operations, financial reporting, data management, and long-term sustainability models.
Mission Teams: We coordinate and deploy specialized travel mission teams to support hospital special medical projects and conduct clinical training.
Supply & Equipment Linkages: We act as a bridge to global resources, managing logistics to secure advanced medical equipment and supplies that are difficult to procure locally.

The Power of the Network: Linking Allies to Strengthen the SystemOur impact doesn't end at the walls of Mercy Hospital. Through the Together for Global Health Network, we are able to expand our technical advising far beyond a single facility to a dynamic web of local allies.

Instead of working in isolated silos, this network allows us to provide powerful linkages between organizations—strengthening the entire healthcare ecosystem by connecting those who have a specific need with those who have the clinical solution. For example:

Junior’s Place of Hope (a specialized school for children with disabilities in Sierra Leone) faced challenges securing consistent healthcare for their students. We stepped in to link Junior's Place of Hope directly with Mercy Hospital, ensuring these vulnerable children now receive dedicated, high-quality medical care.
Our partnership with the Rural Healthcare Initiative opened doors to a massive community milestone. We connected the Rural Healthcare Initiative with Mercy Hospital, creating a partnership that allowed Mercy to develop a specialized sickle cell program.

Living Up to Our Name: A Global FootprintTrue to our name, Helping Children Worldwide is expanding this exact model of supportive, collaborative empowerment around the world. By providing critical financial support to healthcare organizations in Haiti and Guatemala, we are growing our global footprint without ever compromising our roots.

By remaining anchored in our role as a technical advisor and resource bridge, we ensure that local health systems grow stronger, more connected, and entirely self-sufficient. Thank you for partnering with us to champion a model of global health that respects local expertise and builds true independence!

Yasmine Vaughan

Technical Advisor for Global Health and Missions

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World Hepatitis Day: Caring for Those Who Care for Others

7/28/2026

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Most people think hepatitis is a single disease. In reality, hepatitis is a general term that simply means inflammation of the liver. There are several different types of hepatitis causing viruses—including hepatitis A, B, C, D, and E. While they all affect the liver, they differ in how they spread, who they affect, and how they are prevented or treated.

This World Hepatitis Day, we're focusing on one form in particular: hepatitis B.

Hepatitis B is spread through contact with infected blood and certain body fluids. It can be passed from mother to child during birth, through unsafe medical practices, or through accidental exposure to blood. While there is a safe and highly effective vaccine, hepatitis B remains one of the world's leading infectious diseases. Over 250 million people are living with chronic hepatitis B worldwide, and hundreds of thousands die each year from liver cirrhosis or liver cancer caused by the infection.

The burden is especially high in sub-Saharan Africa, where an estimated one in every ten adults is living with chronic hepatitis B. In Sierra Leone, an estimated 18.6% of the population—1.2 million people—live with chronic hepatitis B (compared to around 0.2% in the United States). Although newborns have been vaccinated against hepatitis B since 2007, the majority of people in the country remain unvaccinated, and access to screening and treatment is severely limited. Most health workers in Sierra Leone are unvaccinated against hepatitis B, putting those who regularly come into contact with open wounds, needles, and other sources of infection at increased risk. Despite organizations like PIH leading the charge on this issue, there are no national policies in place to mandate the vaccination of health workers or ensure that vaccines are free and accessible for them.

Suprised to hear this? So were we. Since hepatitis B vaccination became part of the routine childhood immunization schedule decades ago, most Americans have been protected since infancy. It's easy to assume that healthcare workers everywhere have the same protection.

But they don't.

Recently, the leadership at Mercy Hospital identified this gap that many of us never would have thought to ask about: they identified that the vast majority of the hospital staff members have never received the hepatitis B vaccine. Rather than accepting this as "just the way things are," they brought forward a plan to change it.

This highlights both an important challenge and a powerful example of the strong leadership emerging in Sierra Leone. For years, Helping Children Worldwide has worked to support local leadership because we believe the people closest to the challenges are also the people best equipped to identify the solutions. This vaccination campaign wasn't our idea—it was Mercy Hospital's. Their leaders recognized a preventable risk facing the people who care for patients every day and made protecting their staff a priority.

To us, that speaks volumes. Healthy healthcare workers are essential to healthy communities. When doctors, nurses, laboratory staff, and midwives are protected, they can continue serving thousands of patients with confidence and safety. Investing in the people who care for others strengthens the entire health system.

Something as small as a shot in the arm can reveal a critical gap in the healthcare system—but it can also point to a powerful leadership opportunity. When local leaders recognize these gaps and take initiative to address them, even simple solutions can become transformative for entire communities.

This World Hepatitis Day, you have the opportunity to be part of that story.

Your donation will support Mercy Hospital's ongoing mission to provide compassionate, high-quality healthcare and to equip its leaders to respond to the greatest needs facing their community—including initiatives like protecting their healthcare workers from hepatitis B. Together, we can continue strengthening a hospital that cares not only for its patients, but also for the people who have dedicated their lives to caring for others.
https://donate.helpingchildrenworldwide.org/campaigns/3521-mercy-hospital

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Breaking the Barriers: Inside Sierra Leone’s Bold New Approach to Maternal Healthcare

7/14/2026

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This past May, I had the privilege of sitting down with Dr. Moses, Sierra Leone's Director of Reproductive and Child Health at the Ministry of Health to discuss the critical, systemic challenges the nation faces in tackling maternal and child mortality—and the creative, groundbreaking solutions they are deploying to overcome them.

The reality on the ground is complex, but the vision for change is clear. "If you build a clinic, and the services are definitely free, and the quality is good, then your patients will come." These words, shared during our meeting, underscore a shifting healthcare paradigm in Sierra Leone.

Stabilizing the Supply Chain from the Ground Up

A primary hurdle currently facing the healthcare system is a decrease in global investment, which has directly triggered shortages in essential medical supplies and medications. To combat this, the Ministry of Health is collaborating closely with the Ministry of Finance to independently source and stock critical pharmaceuticals. Organizations like the Healey International Relief Foundation are working to provide donations of medications and supplies through the National Medical Supply Agency, strengthening the health care system. Simultaneously, they working in deploying digital inventory tracking so they can ensure a six-month stock at the district level and a three-month stock at local peripheral health units.

Closing the Gap on Non-Emergent Referrals

One of the most heartbreaking challenges discussed was the tragedy of "hidden" emergencies. Many pregnant women visit local Peripheral Health Units (PHUs) and are diagnosed with early indicators of danger, like hypertension or preeclampsia. Because they are not yet in active labor or a state of acute crisis, they do not qualify for emergency ambulance transport.

Tragically, many mothers refuse the hospital referral simply because they cannot afford the transit cash or do not fully grasp the danger—and they pass away at home. To bridge this gap, the Ministry is launching a two-pronged approach:

The Voucher System: A new financial voucher system is being developed to fully reimburse women for non-emergency hospital referral transit.
Direct Human Connections: Referred mothers are now provided with the exact name of a specific healthcare professional awaiting their arrival at the hospital.

Engaging Husbands as Partners in Care

In many rural communities, husbands act as the primary household decision-makers regarding when and where a woman can seek higher-level medical care. If a husband doesn't understand the emergency, treatment is delayed.

To transform this dynamic, the Ministry is actively incentivizing paternal involvement. To encourage husbands to attend antenatal care visits, clinics are fast-tracking couples so that pregnant women who arrive with their husbands are seen first.

Harnessing Mobile Innovation: From Ultrasound to PReSTrack

Technology is rapidly expanding access to care across rural terrains. The Ministry is deploying mobile sonographers to remote villages to perform prenatal ultrasounds—critical for establishing accurate gestational age and identifying early complications like twins. We are proud to personally work alongside incredible peer organizations like Tenki for Born and the Rural Healthcare Initiative who are helping execute this exact strategy on the ground.

On a national scale, digital health infrastructure is taking a massive leap forward. The Ministry of Health has introduced PReSTrack, a web and mobile app designed to provide real-time tracking of pregnancies and flag high-risk conditions early, in 3 districts.

In tandem with PReSTrack, clinicians are starting to utilize a digital Labor Care Guide. This interactive tool requires practitioners to log data in real-time, utilizing automated audio and visual alerts to immediately warn them if a labor is beginning to deviate from a safe path.

Restoring Accountability and Provider Wellness

True systemic change requires looking closely at data and the people delivering care. The Ministry of Health now conducts mandatory weekly maternal mortality meetings with all medical superintendents to strictly review and address every obstetric death.

Furthermore, to combat the fear that often prevents families from speaking up, the Ministry is developing an anonymous reporting framework. This allows patients to safely report instances where respectful maternal care was not delivered, completely eliminating the fear of future retaliation at the clinic.

Finally, we discussed a reality that is too often ignored: provider apathy. Because maternal mortality rates have historically been so devastatingly high, many frontline healthcare workers suffer from deep burnout and secondary trauma. Addressing the mental health of these providers and exposing them to higher clinical standards is absolutely vital to restoring empathy and excellence to the wards.

How Helping Children Worldwide is Standing in the Gap

At Helping Children Worldwide, our entire partnership model is built to directly reinforce and support these exact national priorities.

Clinical and Mental Health Training: Through our Maternal and Child Health Training Project, we ensure local midwives are equipped with advanced, life-saving clinical skills. Crucially, our curriculum also incorporates dedicated modules on provider mental health, stress management, and breath work to directly combat healthcare worker burnout.

Strengthening Mercy Hospital: Our continuous technical and logistical support of Mercy Hospital in Bo empowers the facility to reliably provide the high-quality, completely free care that patients need and deserve.

The Power of the Network: Through the Together for Global Health Network, we actively bring healthcare organizations in Sierra Leone together on a monthly basis to share resources, solve problems, and build stronger linkages to overcome supply shortages together.

By investing in digital innovation, logistical accountability, and the well-being of local medical staff, we are proudly standing alongside our Sierra Leonean allies to ensure that no mother or child is left behind.