Science and medicine
Sierra Leone's best-documented scientific contributions are in medicine, especially tropical and infectious disease, alongside an indigenous writing system and recent engineering innovation.
1859
Among the first West Africans to qualify as doctors
William Broughton Davies, Africanus Horton
1871
First African Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh
Robert Smith
Sources 91
1884
Pamphlet naming "blackwater fever" and linking it to malaria
John Farrell Easmon
c. 1900s
"Mosquito missionaries" campaign for cleaner compounds against malaria
John Augustus Abayomi-Cole
Sources 116
1910s
First African to qualify as a doctor at the University of Liverpool
Eustace Taylor-Cummings
Sources 61
1921
Kikakui syllabary for the Mende language
Kisimi Kamara, building on Mohamed Turay's script
1944
First Black African Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England
Robert Wellesley-Cole
1944
First Sierra Leonean woman to qualify as a doctor
Irene Ighodaro
1960
Published research on the structure and action of human insulin
Davidson Nicol
Sources 65
2010
Free Health Care Initiative for pregnant women, mothers and children under five
Government of Sierra Leone
2012
Youngest person invited to MIT's Visiting Practitioner's Program
Kelvin Doe
Sources 100
2014
Kikakui added to the Unicode Standard (version 7.0)
Unicode Consortium
2014
Ebola virus genome study published in Science
Kenema Government Hospital with the Broad Institute
2018
Directorate of Science, Technology and Innovation founded; first Chief Innovation Officer
David Moinina Sengeh
Medicine before independence
Blackwater fever. Freetown-born John Farrell Easmon's 1884 pamphlet The Nature and Treatment of Blackwater Fever is credited with naming the condition and linking it to malaria. He later became Chief Medical Officer of the Gold Coast.
Public health in the community. Dr Abayomi-Cole found that malaria patients relapsed because mosquitoes bred around their homes, and organised volunteers to advise households on sanitation. Sir Milton Margai, as a colonial medical officer, trained instructors to teach hygiene, literacy and childcare within Sande society initiation.
Surgery. Robert Wellesley-Cole, educated at the Sierra Leone Grammar School and Fourah Bay College, became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1944; the College's record describes him as its first Black African Fellow. Robert Smith had become a Fellow of the Edinburgh college in 1871.
Women in medicine. Irene Ighodaro, Wellesley-Cole's sister, qualified at Durham in 1944 as Sierra Leone's first woman doctor. She later became the first President of the Medical Association of Nigerian Women. West Africa's first woman doctor, Agnes Yewande Savage of Nigeria, had qualified in 1929.
A writing system of its own
In 1921, according to the 1988 heroes book, tailor Kisimi Kamara emerged from ten weeks of seclusion with a complete syllabary for Mende, which he taught at a school in Potoru. The Unicode Standard describes it as having developed from a script by his teacher, Mohamed Turay, with Kamara adding over 150 characters. It was added to the Unicode Standard in 2014.
The Kenema scientists
Kenema Government Hospital's Lassa fever programme gave Sierra Leone rare expertise in viral haemorrhagic fevers. Its laboratory director, Augustine Goba, diagnosed the country's first Ebola case using PCR testing. The resulting study quadrupled the world's Ebola genomic data and released the sequences publicly. Five co-authors died of Ebola before publication: Mohamed Fullah, Mbalu Fonnie, Alex Moigboi, Sheik Humarr Khan and Alice Kovoma.
Health policy
The Free Health Care Initiative began on 27 April 2010, the 49th anniversary of independence. Evaluators found it drove system reforms and coincided with a sharp fall in under-five mortality, though its overall health impact is harder to measure. The Bulletin of the World Health Organization notes it was inspired by similar policies in Rwanda and Uganda.