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Ishbel Matheson is director of media at Save the Children and is blogging from South Sudan over the election period. Friday, April 9, 2010 In the town of Mvolo, Sapana Abuyi, who runs a local NGO, shows us to the only local health facility: a one-storey tw
Ishbel Matheson is director of media at Save the Children and is blogging from South Sudan over the election period.
Friday, April 9, 2010
In the town of Mvolo, Sapana Abuyi, who runs a local NGO, shows us to the only local health facility: a one-storey two-room concrete building containig what Sapana rather optimistically describes the outpatient department, laboratory, injections area, dispensary and a treatment ward, all jumbled together.
The "ward" in reality is a mattress on the floor where 3-year-old Bileli lies unconscious on the floor, a drip in her arm.
Her mother tells me that her husband took them by bicycle from their village 20 km (12 miles) away where there is no medical help at all. However rudimentary this clinic looks, a health worker here can do an on-the-spot test for malaria and administer life-saving drugs.
Malaria is one of the biggest killers of kids in this area - the tropical climate and surrounding green woodland making for ideal mosquito territory.
Bileli's mum tells me that they only have one mosquito net at home and that, in fact, another of her children is sick, but they had no room on the bicycle for them all.
In this remote rural area, the simplest of illnesses prove fatal for chidlren - such as rife diarrhoea and pneumonia. Soon Save the Children and Sapana's SIDF organisation will start training local people to administer drugs themselves, so there is no need to make the arduous journey to the nearest town. This village-level approach has delivered real improvements to child mortality in other parts of Africa and in South America - now the aim is to try it in south Sudan.
Later, we are given a tour of the sparkling new health clinic, which is supposed to replace the old one. The cluster of newly painted concrete buildings, with light airy rooms, remains - as yet - unused.
We are told, ruefully, that when the buildings were put up, no-one asked the contractors to install electricity. Dreams of a mini-operating theatre have been abandoned... Even the funds for a small generator to pump water to the wards had to be scraped together. Still, the plan is to get started - a grand opening is scheduled.
