All too often, we forget about countries that have recently been ravaged by conflict, disease and natural disaster, because the news coverage slows down, and then stops, the online petitions disappear, and the despairing social media statuses vanish from our feeds – and we tell ourselves it's because it's not happening anymore.After 28,000 cases and 11,000 deaths from Ebola, things in West Africa are far from ‘sorted’. The region may have been declared Ebola-free in January 2016, but the underlying problems of public health, social injustice, gender inequality and infrastructure just became more severe after 18 months of contagious disease.Sierra Leone is one of the poorest countries in the world, with around 70% of people living below the poverty line , according to Woman Kind , and a quarter in extreme poverty. As the United Nations Population Fund put it, "Humanitarian crises – whether caused by armed conflict or natural disaster – always hurt women and girls the most." According to UNICEF, in 2013, 88% of women in Sierra Leone had undergone FGM and 94% of displaced households had reported sexual assault during the civil war (1991-2002).

Nyamacoro Silla , who was born in Sierra Leone and now lives in the UK, was the head nurse for the International Medical Corps’ Ebola response programme. She describes healthcare in Sierra Leone now as a very scarce commodity. “During the Ebola epidemic we lost 250 Sierra Leonean healthcare workers and 12 doctors,” she explains. “And we had very few to start with.”Alternative forms of healthcare such as traditional healers were hugely undermined during the Ebola outbreak, so people in Sierra Leone have lost much of their faith in non-western medicine. And yet, according to Silla, such basics as soap and running water still haven’t been provided in all the public hospitals.“I’ve got a lot of friends who work in the national healthcare system there and life is still a struggle. There is a small amount of private healthcare, some public healthcare provided by International Non-Governmental Organisations and there’s the government healthcare system. But healthcare is very expensive."Silla gives an example: "If you were to go to Connaught Teaching Hospital in Freetown (a public hospital), it would cost about 15,000 Sierra Leonean Leones for registration, which is about £2. But invariably you’d pay a bit more than that – maybe 20,000 or 30,000 – depending on who you met on the other side of the window and how amenable they were. Then you’d see a nurse and you’d have to pay another 5,000 or 10,000 Leones for that. Then you’d see a doctor, for which you’d have to pay 30,000 to 50,000 Leones. After that, you’d have to pay for your medicines and the doctor would probably direct you to a specific pharmacy, probably one that they were friends with. You’d spend more money on a number of medicines. Tot all that up and it could be up to 200,000 Leonean Leones, which is about £28. That is a lot of money.”