South Sudan's English Daily Newspaper
"We Dare where others fear"
By Denis Ejulu
Thousands of people in Lokiliri payam located along the Juba-Nimule road had previously been cut off from accessing better healthcare services following outbreak of the December 2013 conflict.
Richard Wani Redento, a clinical officer-in –charge of the newly opened Ngerejebe Primary HealthCare Center (PHCC), said on Tuesday during the handover ceremony of the health facility to the Central Equatoria State government, that previously pregnant mothers and other critically sick people from the area took the expensive route of traveling to Juba for treatable sickness due to lack of a modern fully equipped health center.
Ngerejebe PHCC with 18-bed capacity admission ward is one of the 31 health facilities across the country, constructed with funding from the World Bank under the Enhancing Community Resilience & Local Governance Phase I Project (ECRP).
The facility was previously a Primary HealthCare Unit (PHCU) before being upgraded recently with support from UNOPS, the implementing partner of the World Bank funded projects under ECRP.
UNOPS refurbished and equipped the Ngerejebe health facility with modern support equipment such as 20 solar panels, 18 hospital beds,36 pillow cases, and 72 bed sheets, 3 examination tables, and 3 examination curtains, 6 office chairs, and 4 office tables and 2 office chairs.
Redento, the in-charge of Ngerejebe PHCC asked the government to support the facility with enough qualified staff, adding that they lack midwives, nurses, laboratory technician, and nutritionists and also theater attendant to supervise the theater.
“At the moment, I am the only deployed staff from the ministry of health here, and we have one cleaner, one watch man and two vaccinators. For us to operate at our capacity we need a nurse, midwife, and a laboratory technician and theater attendant and also more two watch men because the place is huge and not fenced,” said Redento.
“We need enough staff; the facility needs to be equipped so that we can serve more people,” he added.
Redento disclosed that for the last two years, they have been over reliant on support under the recently phased out Health Pooled Fund, adding that the government needs to do a lot to support and equip the health facility with health staff, equipment and medicines.
“At the moment we don’t have even anti-malaria drugs in the health facility,” he said.
John Chidumula Nyirenda, Senior Project Manager for the Enhancing Community Resilience & Local Governance Phase I Project said it has benefited about 20 counties in South Sudan.
He noted that they have constructed 345 different infrastructure including 31 health facilities.
“Today, we are handing over one of these facilities here and as we can see it is our hope that this will improve access to health services, I would like to ask the County, State and other leadership to make sure that this facility can be put to use so that people can access services here,” said Nyirenda.
He noted that the newly opened health facility will help to decongest the Juba Teaching Hospital in Juba.
Petronella Kasaka Halwiindi, UNOPS Country Manager in South Sudan (2ND-Right) hands over the keys of Ngerejebe Primary HealthCare Center to James Wani (Left), Director General in the Central Equatoria Ministry of Health.
Petronella Kasaka Halwiindi, UNOPS Country Manager in South Sudan said that had the security situation been stable in previous years in Lokiliri payam, they could have already finished construction of the health facility on time and handed it over to the local authorities.
“The absence of peace robs nations of progress, this challenge that we faced with the total completion of this health facility along with procurement of the hospital equipment and beds is really a testament to the fact, that when there is no peace it costs the world a lot to progress,” she disclosed.
“We made significant changes in choosing the location for the health facility in the beginning because there was conflict; today however, I am glad that we have finally handed over a complete facility in a peaceful environment,” added Kasaka.
Kasaka encouraged the government to recruit the right certified health workforce to work in the health facility.
“We as UNOPS exist to support the people of South Sudan, to support the government of South Sudan and to work in partnerships with other like-minded development organizations to ensure that we are all contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals. What we are doing today, is a direct contribution to the Sustainable Development Goal 3, where we are promoting good health and wellbeing,” she said.
Lukas Loeschner, Disaster Risk Management Specialist with the World Bank, said the Enhancing Community Resilience & Local Governance Project, has improved access to basic infrastructure and services, and also strengthened local institutions, community institutions to sustain this infrastructure.
“I think what we see here today is the critical importance of ECRP towards achieving that objective, it is a project that builds on the successes of the predecessor project which was a government led project, and it provides a foundation for the second phase project (ECRP II) and what this project has really achieved is engagement with the communities by establishing the Boma and Payam development committees as platforms for development,” said Loeschner.
James Wani, Director General in the Central Equatoria State Ministry of Health, said the equipment in the health facility will improve the quality of health in Lokiliri payam and neighboring villages.
“It is our role as Central Equatoria State government to ensure that we have quality health workers and necessary tools to provide quality healthcare to our people, having VIP public toilets, water supply and solar installation at the facility is an advantage to improve access to water and sanitation services in the community,” said Wani.
