SSHCO Vision and Goals
The Southern Sudan Healthcare Organization aims to provide healthcare and a sense of hope for the people of Southern Sudan.
- SSHCO’s immediate project is to build a clinic at Maar.
- Develop a program involving the rotation of doctors visiting the clinic to offer medical treatment as well as educational information concerning health needs.
- Provide medications and equipment to keep the clinic running efficiently.
- Create an opportunity for medical internships, open to students from the U.S. and other countries.
- Create a conducive and realistic environment for missionary and volunteer work at the clinic.
Why Maar?
Maar is a village in the State of Jonglei, Southern Sudan. This is the village where Jacob Atem and David Deng are originally from. They fled this village during the North/South Sudan civil war 20 years ago. Like many villages in the Southern Sudan, Maar experienced a genocide that claimed many lives and separated families for 20 years.
This non-profit organization has been set up because of the need for a acceptable healthcare facility in Maar. Currently, there is a rusty, bullet riddled dispensary that managed to survive the war. In this building, the people of Maar and surrounding areas receive little or no healthcare assistance.
Maar is located between Bor South and Bor North. This isolation makes it difficult to help those who usually need immediate medical attention such as pregnant women, children, and the elderly. The closest clinics in the area are in Panyagor and Bor. It takes two days to get from Maar to Panyagor and three days to reach Bor. These two clinics are run by non-government organizations. Sadly, patients are carried in folded blankets between poles to form a kind of stretcher. Concerned relatives carry the sick on their shoulders and make this journey by foot between two to four days.
For people in Maar and neighboring villages to receive the necessary more extensive healthcare, they need a lot of money and the means to travel to Kenya or Uganda to receive treatment. Many people cannot afford to travel so far, and several people who risk the journey do not make it there alive. Even if these people can make it to either Kenya or Uganda, treatment is often ineffective because the disease has ravaged its victim beyond medical help. Maar is in a strategic position, and a Clinic there would be accessible to all communities in the area.
Africa Today Associates’ data
In 2006, a team of graduate students from the medical program at the University of Denver visited Maar and Paliau. The team formed Africa Today Associates (ATA).
ATA’s findings:
- The dispensaries, if any, contained virtually no medicines.
- The medicines available were intended for diseases other than those prevalent in the villages.
- The majority of medicines were either expired or were on the verge of expiration.
- An absence of a laboratory facility.
According to the ATA, “health workers in the area lack the capacity to effectively diagnose diseases and consequently fail to administer the ‘right’ medicine” (Agyeman-Duah, p 6). This is because these health workers have little to no health equipment or qualifications.
There are only a couple of health options people in Maar can choose from when they are sick. One is herbal medicines which become placebos. No one is sure about the effectiveness of herbal medicine, but the sick feel if they are taking something; they have some hope of getting better. The other option is prayer. God answers prayer - no doubt. Yet, God has given us the intelligence and skills to provide simple healthcare to people who need it.
Main Health Concern in Maar
Pre and postnatal healthcare is a major problem in Maar and in Southern Sudan as a whole. This can be explained by high levels malnourishment and mortality rates in the country. According to the World Health Organization (WHO)
- 13.5 percent of South Sudanese children die before they’re five years old and only 2.7 percent of children are fully immunized
(Wheeler par. 2). - “South Sudan has the world’s worst maternal mortality rate at 2,054 per 100,000 live births. Only 13.9 percent of deliveries are witnessed by labor and delivery health workers” (Wheeler par 4).
In the case of Maar, children scarcely receive immunization or prenatal care because they are born in one of the most remote and isolated parts of Sudan.
When the ATA visited Maar in October/ November, 2006, there was an outbreak of measles in the area of Paliau and Maar. “The Paliau health facility was endowed with only 200 doses of measles vaccinations and this was to be split between Maar and Paliau, a combined population of more than 10,000 people” (Agyeman-Duah, p 22). As a result, not all the children received vaccination. Consequently, 50% of the cases that were recorded in Paliau ended in mortality according to the ATA report (Agyeman-Duah).
The lack of a maternity health center is also a problem in the community. As a result, women deliver in their houses with no little or no medical attention available. There are traditional midwives or Traditional Birth Attendants (TBA) who assume the role of a delivery health worker in cases of easy and simple delivery. Unfortunately, the traditional midwives do not have the training or resources to handle complicated deliveries. Many deliveries are fatal.
The Plan
SSHCO and Maar Health Project: Affiliation?
The Maar Health Project under the direction of the SSHCO is not affiliated with any other organization. It is however; open to organizations or individuals willing to help in this desperately needed medical clinic in Maar.
Funds and resources
The clinic will have waiting rooms, consulting rooms, a laboratory and admission wards. Expansion will go on as more funds are available. The initial size of the clinic in Maar is dependent on the amount of money raised through generous donations.
The ground breaking for the clinic in Maar will begin when the funds available to SSHCO reach $50,000. This goal is hoped to be reached by September 2009, if not earlier.
The money that the SSHCO raises will be spent on the building materials and the labor force. The elders of Maar have provided a piece of land for this project to take effect.
Conclusion
Our Dream
The thought of lives being saved, and the streets of Maar and neighboring areas being filled with healthy and happy children running around is what the SSHCO dreams of.
Thank you for doing your part in letting this dream come true.
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