Hawa is the nursing officer (lead nurse) inside the Special Care Baby Unit at Ola During Children’s Hospital in Freetown, Sierra Leone. She is a graduate of the bachelor’s program in neonatal nursing that Project HOPE helped build and is currently earning her master’s degree in the graduate program. Once she graduates with her master’s degree, she can apply to be the chief nursing officer in the unit.
“The other nurses say that being posted here is a punishment,” she says. “They say, ‘What have you done? You were posted to a punishment.’ Because the work is very hard. But the patient care here has really improved. Now we can properly assess babies. When babies come in, we get their vitals and their weight. The unit is much quieter now. I enjoy working here.”
