Africa-Press – South-Sudan. The ICRC and the World Bank have agreed to prolong their operational collaboration with the South Sudan COVID-19 emergency response and health system preparedness project to provide secondary healthcare services at the Akobo County Hospital (ACH).
The objective is to sustain the availability and quality of essential health services in a region that has been affected by bouts of tension plaguing healthcare services.
The ICRC said in a statement that it will be engaging stakeholders relevant to the project it conducted as well as assessing potential environmental and social risks linked to the support provided to the ACH and devised an approach to managing these.
It stated that the groundwork and the iterative and continuous follow-up provided will ensure adequate environmental and social standards are lived-up to.
The Akobo County Hospital (ACH), located in Akobo County, Jonglei State, is a 62-bed public secondary health facility that provides hospital services in line with the South Sudan Ministry of Health (MoH) guidelines through its five main departments: outpatient, pediatric, maternity, medical inpatient, and surgical departments.
The ACH has a catchment population of approximately 200,000 people and is among the areas most affected by protracted armed conflict and other situations of violence in the country.
Past armed conflict and the still recurring communal violence in Jonglei have left it with weak infrastructure and inadequate capacity to provide essential services, including health care.
Malaria and cholera are endemic to the whole country, whose maternal and infant mortality rates are among the highest in the world. In addition, South Sudan is also susceptible to climate shocks.
In 2020, severe flooding affected more than half of the country; the deluge destroyed crops, contaminated water sources and displaced many thousands of people.
The COVID-19 pandemic and its socio-economic repercussions have compounded the situation of communities already dealing with the impact of prolonged violence.
According to South Sudan’s Ministry of Health (MoH), there were approximately 10,500 confirmed COVID-19 cases and more than 100 deaths by the end of April 2021.
The Akobo County Hospital first received support from the ICRC in August 2018, when an ICRC mobile surgical team was temporarily assigned to the ACH to assist it in responding to influxes of weapon-wounded patients.
Since January 2019, the ICRC, in cooperation with the World Bank, has been providing comprehensive material, technical and financial support to the ACH.
On the basis of a memorandum of understanding signed between the County Health Department (CHD) of Akobo and the ICRC, the ICRC affirmed its commitment to continue to provide assistance to the ACH to enable it to deliver secondary level of care in line with national and/or international standards in the fields of weapon-wound surgery; general surgery; other hospital care such as internal medicine, emergency medicine, paediatrics, and emergency obstetrics; and mental-health and psychosocial support1 for victims of violence, including sexual violence.
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