Radio Miraya
2834: Health on the Frontline: South Sudan’s Fight Against Floods and Surging Medical Needs
You're listening to the Miraya breakfast show and yes, this is where the big conversation begins every morning. And as I'm glad to tell you that my guests already here with me in the studio this morning will be discussing and looking at the reason flooding in the country as you might have heard that the flooding has worsened and already there is a dire need for especially also affecting the health situation in the country. Now according to the World Health Organization, South Sudan is experiencing some of its worst flooding in decades, displacing 226,000 people and some much in health facilities, leaving many communities devastated. Now World Health Organization is actively responding to this crisis, working alongside the local authorities and community leaders to try to help and address the situation. Well, joining me this morning to discuss more about this particular situation is Dr. Tony Tambay from the World Health Organization. And also we have Mr. Mabir Kiv, who is a chief of planning from the Ministry of Health. Gentlemen, good morning and it's good to have you here on the Miraya breakfast show. - Yes, good morning and we are happy to be here to discuss more in details and in depth and regarding the flood situation in the country. And we are happy to be here. - Thank you, thank you. Welcome, Mabir, it's good to have you. - Thank you, sir, my Miriam Raya for having us. We are glad and we are happy to provide the needed update to the public. - Great, all right, let's get talking about this. Of course the flooding has, you know, been one of the worst thing that has been affecting the country for quite some time now. Just give us an overview briefly. Mr. Tony, can you provide us with an overview of the current flooding situation in South Sudan and its immediate impact on health and displaced populations? Okay, let's begin with you, Mabir. - Thank you, thank you, sir, my Miriam Raya. Just to begin with, currently South Sudan is grappling with multiple emergencies, including disease outbreaks, ongoing humanitarian situation as impact of Sudan crisis as far as we know in the country. With increased influx of returnees and refugees in the country because of the Sudan crisis. Flooding is a cause of one of the emergencies and continue to impact displaced population, country-wide, and major cause of flooding is attributed to mainly continuous heavy rainfall from the start of rain season and compounded by control water release from Lake Victoria has affected the climate change. Currently we have over 1.3 million populations that are affected by the floods across 42 counties of South Sudan with Northern Bargazal that is leading and UNT state comprising over 40% of the affected population. About 300,000 populations are displaced by the flood in 17 counties. So far, the total number of submerged health facilities in the flood affected areas is 58. And as of this week, we have 12 snake bites incident that were reported in flood affected locations with that make a cumulative number to 92 since the start of floods, since Agass. So this week also, there is no incidence of drowning and no incidence of death reported due to flooding this week. And that let us of cumulative, we have only three droning cases that were just that. That is as of week for the one. Okay. All right, we'll get back to you, of course, for more details of all this. Now, Mr. Tolle with 58 health facilities so much and many more inaccessible because of the flooding. How is the World Health Organization addressing the challenges of delivering health care in these particular affected communities or areas? - Thank you very much. Like I said, we're glad to be here in the studio and going straight to that. I think, of course, there are a lot of bottlenecks and challenges regarding the floods. And one of them is accessibility to the affected population. And also facilities are getting submerged and also surrounded with floods. So being with WHO being the core pipeline and the technical arm of the Ministry of Health, of course WHO support the frontline health partners with prepositioning of emergency medical supplies to address the acute gap in medical supplies and working closely with the partners and the Ministry of Health on the last mile delivery of those supplies. And that also entails to increase access to basic and essential health care services and using various modality to ensure the populations is having access to basic health care services. WHO is also able to preposition and distribute over 87.4 metric tons of emergency medical kids. And that also entails inter-agency emergency health kids, cholera investigation kids, and also pneumonia kids. And this is to benefit over 870,000 individuals in the flood affected areas. And with that also as part of the response, WHO is in a preposition to preposition additional and the strategical supplies. And that includes a snake bite venom antisera. And that also entails during the flooding season we see as such in malaria cases, as well as snake bite cases. And this will countermeasure the impact of those increased mobilities. With also anti-malaria bean preposition accounting to over 250,000 doses that has been prepositioned so far. And also including Istanbul rapid diagnostic tests for malaria to investigate the malaria cases. - Yes, and basically let's go slowly on these ones. Now with the flooding, what are some of the most health risks? I know you didn't mention about the malaria cases cholera and also the snake bites. But what are the health risks when this continues and how are you responding to it as well health organizations? - Of course, in my previous comment where I think indicated is one of the key issues is facilities getting cut off with the affected populations and facilities getting submerged. So they lack access to basic health care services. So what basically WHO does is as part of his mandate is to preposition adequate emergency supplies. Because most of the existing facilities that are receiving now the displaced population are seeing a burden of cases that they're seeing in the facility and WHO complement by providing the frontline health care partners with those respective supplies. And the other thing is also to address issues related to basic health care services which is resorted to makeshift clinics and true also mobile health units with provisions of integrated health care services that has been conducted. That is include consultations, routine immunizations activity, screening of children for malnutrition as well as the far facilitating the referral of clinically ill patient for further clinical management. And I think this is also being done in conjunction with the Ministry of Health and also the frontline health care workers. - Yes, and Mr. Mabir, you're from the Ministry of Health. We have had quite a number of callers who normally callers and complaining about, let's say, drugs, particularly on malaria cases and all that. How is the Ministry responding to this increase of risk even during this particular flooding situation? - Yeah, thank you very much, Radio Maria. As I said before, one most important thing that the Ministry of Health is doing is leadership perspective is coordinating all the resources within the country, especially medicines that are supplied to the location that are affected by the flooding. So currently we have health system project that is handed over the issues of the medicine and it is now distributing medicines across the country. So with the flat affected locations, we are prioritizing them to ensure that we preposition them and WHO is our counterpart, technical support, through who has, we deliver medication to those areas that are heavily affected through the Ministry of Health leadership. - Yes, and Dr. Tony, just tell us what role do local authorities and community leaders play in the World Health Organization's efforts or respond efforts and how are you working together to address this particular crisis? - Yeah, I think I will check it as soon as we can. - Oh, okay, and you can take it, okay, go ahead. - Yeah, thank you very much. As Minister of Health, the role that is played by the local authority, they have a multiple role. Number one, they have community engagement and mobilization is one of a very important role that the local authority is playing, especially awareness campaigns to inform the affected like a displaced population. And then behavioral change also is very important in terms of community engagement. We talk of coordination of the services. Minister of Health is coordinating the services with local authorities and local partners that are on the ground where flatter has affected, especially on resource allocation and integration of the services. Local authorities are really helping us better to inform us of the areas that are heavily affected, especially the highland data are okay and highland data are not okay. We also talk of data collection in terms of surveillance. You see local authorities can assist in gathering the data on health, trends, diseases, especially outbreak, another uptake providing valuable insights of the Minister of Health. The other thing is feedback mechanism that is really very important. Our local authorities on the grounds are giving us feedback, either they have received the health services or they have not received the health services so that we act on them. And then the other thing is crisis response management that is really very important in these regards. We have formed the crisis management committees that are on the ground to ensure that we get in touch with them and that is through local authorities. That is really very important to inform the decision makers. And then strengthening of the disease surveillance as I said before, funding a resource allocation. Our local authorities always help us in that regard. - All right, yes. And Tony, just the issue of refugees and returnees in some parts of the country, there are nearly 800 who have returned. Now with this flooding, how are you factoring in these particular people in response to the situation that they go through due to some of these flooding needs? - Thank you very much. I think it's worth mentioning here that the country is really grappling with multiple emergencies. And that, of course, includes the multiple outbreaks and also the humanitarian crisis, which is the refugees and returnees that are coming in due to the impact of the ongoing Sudan crisis. The World Health Organization, of course, is taking several measures to address the health needs of the nearly affected refugees and refugees in the country amidst the ongoing flooding crisis. First of all, is to highlight on the targeted health services where WHO is ensuring that health services are accessible to the refugees and returnees, particularly in critical entry points like Rain County, which have received the huge number of the returnees in the country. With emergency health kits, WHO is also continuing to backstop emergency response partners by distributing emergency health kits to the locations, including areas with high concentration of refugees and returnees. And these kids also contain essential medical supplies to treat various health conditions, including malaria, which is one of the high cost of mobilities in the flood affected areas. With disease surveillance, of course, is strengthening and enhancing disease surveillance in places to quickly identify and respond to any potential outbreak. And that comes in handy with a capacity building of health care workers and also the frontline responders. Community engagement, of course, comes in as part of the critical component of response to the refugees and returnees. With co-dinations and partners specifically, health partners response where WHO, under the humanitarian organizations, to provide comprehensive response, to ensure that we have aligned interventions to the affected population, including the refugees and the returnees. - Great. And of course, at the moment, we all acknowledge the whole health organization is doing quite a lot in trying to help work together with the ministry. But in light of this recurring flooding that has been happening over and over again, what long-term strategies is world health organization advocating for to build a more resilient health system in the country? - Well, thank you very much. I think we'll take it on behalf of the ministry. The most important thing here is infrastructure development. Like, at the moment, what we are doing is to encourage the local populations to strengthen health facility by building a local dyke to ensure that the facilities are not so much in water. Meanwhile, the government continue advocating for more support. The other thing is holiday warning system, like implementing a robust holiday warning system for floods and other natural disasters to enable time and response and preparedness measures, including evacuation plans and resource allocation. That is very important. The other thing is community-based health initiative by empowering the communities. You know, one worst thing here, it is if the communities are not aware or they are not educated on the risk of floods, you will see at some point the situation will be recurring. So what we are stepping is to empower the communities and give them health education on risk of staying in the waters and much areas. And then the other one is integration of health and environmental policies. That is really very important in this regard by ensuring ecosystem management, like promoting sustainable land and water management, practice to reduce flooding, risk-improved and health outcome. And then climate resilience or planning, integrating climate resilience into health, planning, ensuring that health policies consider environmental factors and other impact that may be contributed to the public health. And then the other one is we need to continue strengthening disease surveillance. You know, our surveillance in the country is really very sensitive to the government or the Ministry of Health who will continue enhancing the disease surveillance to continue monitoring and respond quickly to the events. And then the final things is on, the final thing is on funding and resource mobilization, is one of the key things. Of course, others are long-term and others are short-term. This is what the Ministry is doing with support from WHO. - All right, let's turn it out on a personal level. For those who have found themselves, of course, in these areas that flooding is taking all these areas that are front to flooding, what personal measures or precautions should they take to prevent themselves from some of the diseases that will come as a result of our flooding? - Yes, thank you once again. And I think in that note, I will say the advice that is also being shared out to be followed up closely. And that will also entails measures that will help prevent old the hazards that are coming in with floods. One thing we'd like to highlight here is that looking at the low-lying areas, and I think those are areas that are also prone to floods, with also projections that has been conducted, looking into all the aspects and given the traditional areas of floods. We have had floods in the previous years, with all the projections that we are doing, also taking into account that the lessons learned from the previous floods. And that also better helps us improve into how better we can respond to that floods. Based on personal experience, I think one of the issue is that having the minimum feedback from the community on how best for us to respond to the floods. And also, like my colleague has said, strengthening disease surveillance. And that takes us as far a step forward towards having community-based surveillance. And that one will help us pick a lot, any potential outbreak a lot from the community. - All right, thank you. Yes, you'd like to add something, Mr. Mayor. - Yeah, thank you very much. As far as my colleague just mentioned, in the country, we have a hotline. And hotline is one of our centers that will receive feedback from the community, bridging the community with the service providers. In those areas, what we advise at some point, if there's like a unique situation that is experienced by the communities there, they call through double six, double six, and then the authorities response, or we link them to the service providers on the ground. This is the current thing we have on the ground. Thank you. - All right, thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. Mabure, for coming to Miraya breakfast on Mabure Kir, who is from the Ministry of Health. Thank you for coming to the Miraya breakfast show. Dr. Tony Tombbe, thank you for coming to the Miraya breakfast, we do appreciate your time. Thank you, that's all we can do for now. - Thank you. - Thank you. Thank you, Tony.