South Sudan takes baby steps to recover

 

A South Sudanese woman carries a basket on her head as she walks through Gudele Market in Juba, South Sudan on January 23, 2012. AFP 

By Mwenda wa Micheni

On hitting the runway at the Rumbek Airport in South Sudan, aircraft usually kick a cloud of dust. And that is how it has been over the years in this town that doubles as the capital of Lakes States.

But with the construction work set to begin on the facility next month, the dusty tale could soon be in the past. Already, there are graders and workers pitching tents at the airport. Most of the flights landing here bring UN and NGO workers to serve the area.

This is just one of the signs of progress in South Sudan, a country trying to weave its national fabric after over two decades of conflict. On some of the country’s roads are workers; towns are emerging from huts; churches reconstructed, health facilities also taking shape as colleges prepare to graduate the country’s future workforce with serious challenges.

In Rumbek town, it is business unusual. On the main roundabout, you see dummy traffic lights, which is an indication of work in progress. Then there are the experimental ways of providing essential services alongside the official. One such effort is run by a network of volunteers, with funding support from UN’s Global Fund.

About three kilometres on the margins of the town, you meet a 38-year-old Martha Akoi Mapour. A resident of Akuac II village, she speaks fluent Dinka and a smattering of Juba Arabic.

The widow and mother of four, one deceased, has no marks of formal education just like 73 per cent of the country’s adult population that is illiterate. But that has not stopped her village from confidently taking their children to her for malaria treatment.

Every morning, Ms Mapour who was a cook during war transports her wooden box that serves as the village pharmacy into her open air clinic, some 20 metres from her grass thatched house.

Here, villagers with unwell children come for malaria drugs and consultations on other cases. That is in cases where the lady they call doctor has physically tested the baby and noticed symptoms of malaria fever.

“I am serving children and by extension the entire community,” says Ms Mapour, who is one of the community based distributors, abbreviated as CBD.

“When a child has signs of malaria, I administer drugs. When they get well, I am very happy,” says a mother who repeats the routine every day.

She also attends to sick children past her working hours, something that relieves parents the pain of walking the distance to the State hospital in Rumbek and the congestion at the hospital that has very few medical experts.

Currently, the State, whose population is estimated at 800,000, has around 23 doctors, both private and public. This translates to a doctor to patient ratio of around 1:30,000 patients. This is way stretched above the WHO’s recommendation of 1:100.

Even worse is the average 30 kilometres distance that patients have to trek to the nearest health facility through the state’s unkempt roads, making the CBDs a welcome idea to most villagers.

So far, they have been crucial in health provision to children, in a state that reported 133,000 cases and 184 deaths from malaria. Most of these were children. Nationally, the disease contributes about 20 per cent of all deaths across the ages.

An innovative way of combating malaria among children, the distributor’s network that borrows heavily from practices during the war where herbs, food and other items were mostly distributed by women, has served Rumbek well so far.