Child Survival in South Sudan |
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March 6th, 2007 - 02:28PM |
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Photo: Emmanuel d'Harcourt/The IRC In South Sudan the IRC's child survival team must cover vast distances, often by foot, to provide life-saving treatment to children. Half the year, the added obstacles of heavy rains and flooding make keeping a steady supply of drugs difficult. The goal of the IRC’s community-based treatment programs is to give children access to high-quality, life-saving treatment for diarrhea, malaria and pneumonia, which are the main killers of children in South Sudan. By having communities participate, the IRC has effectively treated and helped more children. Johnson Mwamba, IRC community treatment program manager, and his team travel village by village to organize meetings to explain the IRC's community-based treatment programs. The programs rely on local, IRC-trained volunteers - called 'community distributors'- who agree to assess the basic health needs of children and provide supplied drugs to prevent the three deadly, yet treatable diseases: diarrhea, malaria and pneumonia. If the health condition of a child is more serious, then the community distributor refers the child to the area clinic. The clinic may be over 20 km away from some villages and impossible to access during the rainy season. Below Johnson describes his field visit to Pachak, a remote area of villages covered by one health clinic in South Sudan, to check on IRC community-based programs. “In January I traveled to Pachak, which has been cut off by rains for the past six months. After the rains receded, the area was accessible again. Stephen Mamoun, IRC senior supervisor in Ganyliel and Liah Puot, IRC supervisor for Pachak, joined me. It was my first visit since the rains began in May 2006, and I wanted to find out about the drug stock register and the community distributors. I also wanted to ensure the good quality of care in the IRC’s community-based treatment programs. We also planned to visit one of our community distributors. All drugs for the clinic and the community-based treatment programs are kept in one store and the area community distributor supervisor carefully maintains the records. The four main drugs that we want the community distributors to stock are oral rehydration salts (ORS) and zinc for diarrhea, Artesunate combined therapy (ACT) for malaria, and Amoxicillin for pneumonia. Checking on the four drugs’ stock, I found the supervisor, who receives and issues the drugs to community distributors, had a well-kept stock card to show his records. He had enough stock of the four drugs to last 2 months at the current rate of utilization. James Chirue, the IRC nurse in charge of the area clinic, expressed satisfaction with the community distributors’ work since their training in June 2006. James told me that, since community distributors started working in his area treating children with fever, diarrhea and pneumonia, he sees far fewer children with routine illnesses, as they now get life-saving treatment closer to home. This allows James to make the most of his skills and focus on children with more complicated illnesses. Community distributors are trained to refer any child with complications, such as convulsions, severe breathing difficulty, or severe dehydration. You can see a photo set of a child survival team field visit in South Sudan on Flickr. And look for Johnson's report on a visit to a community distributor tomorrow. Posted By: Wynne Boelt | Africa, Children & Youth, Health Permalink |
