By: Mustapha Momoh
First Published in June 2019
Dr. Edward Ali Nahim is a Sierra Leonean Psychiatrist who was born on the 12th of December 1944 in Port Loko, Northern Sierra Leone. His mother was a Temne and his father was a Lebanese national who settled, married, and lived in Port Loko.
Dr. Nahim grew up in Port Loko and Pepel in the northern region of Sierra Leone. He started his primary education at the Church of England School in Pepel now called the Sierra Leone Church (SLC) School and later furthered his Secondary education at the Schlenker Secondary School in Port Loko from form 1 to 3 and later proceeded to the Bo Government Secondary School in 1959 where he sat his O’ level and A’ levels exams respectively.
In 1965, Dr. Nahim traveled to the Soviet Union now Russia to study Medicines for seven years where he graduated with an MD (Doctor of Medicines).
Upon graduation in 1972, Dr. Nahim decided to return to Sierra Leone that same year and started working with the Ministry of Health and Sanitation, where he has worked for many years.
Dr. Nahim later went to London in 1978 to study Psychiatry and he graduated with a Diploma in Psychological medicine; became a member of the Royal College of Psychiatry United Kingdom and came back to Freetown, Sierra Leone in 1982 and has been working at the mental hospital up till now. Although he is retired, he is on a yearly contract as a consultant psychiatrist, avowed by Dr. Nahim.
His early professional life was very challenging as he is the only consultant psychiatrist in the Republic of Sierra Leone.
As a way to pass on his knowledge to students at the medical school in Sierra Leone, Dr. Nahim introduced psychiatry at the College of Medicines and Allied Health Sciences (COMAHS) and has been lecturing at COMAHS until his retirement last year.
Dr. Nahim treats mental patients from correctional centers, Police custody, homes, and on the streets. During the rebel war in Sierra Leone, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) leader, Foday Sankoh was in his custody when he was declared mad and was with him treating him in a secret location so that he cannot be released by the rebels.
After 11 years of brutal civil war, Dr. Nahim demobilized child soldiers and treated them for both physical and mental illnesses and as well as job rehabilitation so that the child soldiers could find jobs to survive.
Dr. Nahim’s motivation as a doctor was to do a specialist course in general medicine, but the Chief Medical Officer then requested that he study psychiatry as there was none in Sierra Leone. He graciously accepted and went on to do post-graduate psychiatric training.
The highlights of Dr. Nahim’s career are the fact that he has been able to maintain psychiatric treatment in Sierra Leone for over 35 years and mental health has survived.
Dr. Nahim is a consummate professional who loves and enjoys his job passionately and never regretted being a psychiatrist at all.
Generally, some of the challenges faced in psychiatry in Sierra Leone is the fact that psychiatry is poorly understood, stigmatized, isolated, and poorly funded by the government. Psychiatry is a big challenge in Sierra Leone today both for family members and the Ministry of Health.
Dr. Nahim chose psychiatry not because of the money but to help all mental patients in Sierra Leone as he sometimes treats patients for free.
He appealed to the government for an increase in funding for all mental health services in Sierra Leone, the training of more psychiatric nurses and doctors and to increase in psychiatric hospitals nationwide.
