Health Ministry Confident on Logistics Outreach amidst Floods

By Okech Francis

Assortment of drugs and other health logistics were prepositioned as early as March to stem out arising problems when flood waters rise in the countryside, the Minister of Health, Yolanda Awel Deng said.

South Sudan is expected to run through consistent heavy floods that are unprecedented. The floods are expected to surpass that which hit the region in the 1960s.

Sensing heavy rains would fall after the heatwaves between March and April, the Ministry took it up to preposition enough health supplies in areas deemed threatened, Awel said on Sunday in Juba.

“The Ministry began the preparation at that time through the humanitarian and disaster committee,” she said.

“What we did before the floods came, we already prepositioned our commodities. We had already taken our medicine, we had already taken our personnel to some of the areas that we had already mapped would be high risk for flooding.”

To date, the floods have reportedly affected more than 735,000 people across 38 counties in the country.

Tens of thousands of people have been displaced in the Upper Nile, Unity and Bahr el Ghazal regions were farms and habitat areas have submerged.

Food crops from farms, as well as livestock are being destroyed and children have had to abandon schools and flee with communities to higher areas.

Reaching out to those who refused to move to higher group with health assistance will however be very difficult, Awel said.

According to her, they risk being cut off from health services since moving to them would be very difficult.

However, Awel said, work continues expressly to ensure health services reach out.

“As we are speaking, we are working hand in hand, the national Ministry of Health that trickles down to the State Ministry of Health that trickles down to the County Health Directors” Awel said.

“So we are having a network to identify some of these areas that are actually highly affected and help is already on the way,” she said.

“It is very difficult to reach them because some of the areas, there are no roads and the commodities which are already stationed, some of them have been impacted by the floods but we are continuing with our partners from time to time to see if we can help.”