Africa-Press – South-Sudan. By William Madouk Garang
Malakal Teaching Hospital (MTH) is experiencing a serious shortage of essential medicines as it has not received medical consignments for more than three years.
Many residents in Malakal town of Upper Nile state, the area which was hit the most by 2013 conflict, are facing worse health services because of health facilities that were vandalized or submerged by water.
Dr. Byinj Ernest Apuktong, the state minister of Health told the media that over 300 health workers deserted their duty post when conflict erupted leaving the majority to flee to Juba and that request was made for their return.
“We have requested from the national ministry of Health to allow those doctors to return to their workplace here in Malakal or if they want to continue working at Juba Teaching Hospital, they should give us those seats to employ new doctors,” Dr. Apuktong explained.
Acting Medical Director, Dr. Nyango John Adwok appreciated partners especially the World Bank and UNICEF for exerting efforts adding that partners’ support has helped hospitals to continue being operational though the gap is still big.
“We have drugs problem, you see the last consignment of drugs came last July to the hospital [from partners], and the drugs from the national government came in 2019 up to now we didn’t receive any drugs from the national ministry of health since,” Dr. Adwok told Juba Monitor in Malakal.
“We have a lot of problems here, I think it needs intervention from our partners, state government and at the national level. So, there are a lot of problems I don’t know if we can manage to overcome them,” he added.
Dr. Adwok stressed that relative peace has encouraged people to come back home and the number is increasing daily as such more health support and services are highly required.
Dr. Khat Deng, Medical Director of MTH said the hospital is troubled with a lack of qualified staff, shortage of drugs and testing kit for HIV and Hepatitis B, making it hard to establish data of surging diseases.
“With the little resources International Medical Corps (IMC) provide to the hospital, MTH is now functioning for instances in maternity we use to receive some emergencies cases which is a benefit from World Bank support,” Dr. Deng said.
“We are urging our government and its donors to upgrade Malakal Teaching Hospital to be in the status of a state referral hospital,” he added.
He added that the average attendance of out-patient department range from 80 to above 100 patients per day with common morbidity such as malaria, pneumonia and watery diarrhea, among others.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), nearly 16, 000 live in Malakal town and around 32,000 internally displaced persons (IDPS) live in the Protection of Civilians Site (POC).
The children’s agency – UNICEF set up a unique partnership with the Ministry of Health and the World Bank to support access to health services in Malakal, Jonglei states with amount worth USD 55.3 million.
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