Africa-Press – South-Sudan. An acute shortage of blood has hit Kuajok Hospital in South Sudan’s Warrap state putting at risk the lives of patients requiring urgent blood transfusion. So severe is the shortage that two children lost their lives at the health facility in the last two months after failing to receive blood.
Speaking to Radio Tamazuj on Friday last week, the Minister of Health in Warrap State, Abak Yel Madoot urged the public to donate blood to save the lives of patients requiring blood transfusion.
He said the main hospital has run short of blood adding, “The challenge we have is that, we don’t have blood and some patients, especially children might need it urgently.”
The minister further said, “Some challenges like a shortage of staff need a budget and when we asked implementing partners, they told us that a hospital like this should have more doctors.”
Gong Dut Wol, the hospital’s medical director, said:” “In Kuajok hospital, we don’t have a blood bank, instead we are having a blood fridge and we don’t have constituted a blood bank reason being there is no constant electricity.” He appealed to the public to visit the hospital to donate blood to prevent loss of lives.
“In the last two months, we lost two children due to the shortage of blood because their relatives brought them when it was too late. We didn’t do anything so they passed on and within this month, we referred one child to Wau for blood transfusion,” he concluded.
