On the Obama administration’s Global Health Initiative website – which we hear will soon undergo a much-needed upgrade – the GHI lists seven principles.

No. 2: “Encourage country ownership and invest in country-led plans.”

At a session last week at the American Public Health Association’s conference in Washington, D.C., one panelist said that country ownership is a critical factor if GHI will succeed.

Chris Collins, the vice president and director of public policy at amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, said that it only made common sense that US global health efforts followed the lead of country health leaders.

Political will is said to be able to move mountains, bringing about unlikely reforms in countries desperately needing them. Sierra Leone’s President Ernest Bai Koroma is a prime example of this phenomenon. In power since 2007, Koroma fought skeptical donors to bring free health care to pregnant and lactating women and children under five in Sierra Leone after a 1 in 8 maternal mortality rate created a human rights emergency. While the system is not yet perfect, preliminary results have pointed to more women and children getting the life-saving treatment they need.

However, Koroma has not stopped his reforms at health as is evidenced in a recent CNN interview where he shared his ambitious vision for his country. “In the next 50 years, we are not only going to transform ourselves from a low-income country, but we will get ourselves to the level of middle-income country and by the next 50 years, Sierra Leone will be a donor nation rather than a recipient nation.”