Facing Reverse Migration, International Medical Corps Prepares for New Challenges in Southern Sudan

Photo: IMC

The midwifery and nursing training facilities for IDP’s in Kajo Keji County, South Sudan.

In Sudan, it is the Darfur region that has received much of the attention from the international community and the media. Yet South Sudan, often called the “forgotten emergency,” continues to suffer from disease, poverty and political instability.

As the lesser known crisis in the country, South Sudan is still reeling from multiple civil wars that claimed 1.5 million lives and left another four million homeless. Its staggering population migration, which includes thousands of the parentless “Lost Boys,” has spread across the country in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps and spilled into neighboring nations, as thousands braved miles of treacherous terrain to flee the violence.

While a tentative peace accord was signed in 2005, the region remains one of the poorest, most underdeveloped areas in the world, with an estimated one in four children dying before the age of five - mostly from preventable disease - and only one doctor for every 100,000 people. To address this crisis, International Medical Corps (IMC) which began working in South Sudan in 1994, has transitioned its programs in the post-war period to support the 95,000 refugees returning home and the challenges that their re-entry creates. For the past decade, IMC has worked to resolve the widening health care deficit, serving a scattered refugee network through primary and secondary medical facilities that deliver routine care, identify potential health care threats, and introduce new services.

Photo: IMC

IMC constructed an isolation camp in preparation for the threat of a potential outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in Kajo Keji County, South Sudan.

On the border with Uganda, Kajo Keji County is home to thousands of returning refugees and, consequently comprises one of International Medical Corps’ largest operations in South Sudan. IMC is currently the only secondary medical support in the region, making it the only health care facility that offers maternal, pediatric, nutritional, and surgical care to Kajo Keji’s 200,000 residents. While the facility has had an enormous impact, it still lacks the equipment necessary to perform certain critical services, such as blood transfusions, and much-needed intensive care units. Given South Sudan’s devastated infrastructure, these services are simply non-existent.

In addition to its in- and out-patient services, the clinic also combats infectious diseases common to South Sudan, such as TB, HIV, and African sleeping sickness. Spread by flies, African sleeping sickness is a parasitic disease that, if left untreated, wreaks havoc on the central immune system, causing confusion, poor coordination, and sensory disturbance. In recent months, IMC successfully screened over 90 percent of Kajo Keji’s native residents and 100 percent of its returnees for the potentially fatal disease.

In Kajo Keji, International Medical Corps faces not only enormous demand for its medical services, but must also prepare contingency plans for potential health threats. Its proximity to the Ugandan border makes Kajo Keji vulnerable to any hardship of its neighbor, and currently, International Medical Corps is on high-alert for the spread of the deadly Ebola virus that recently swept through Uganda, claiming more than 60 lives. Erupting in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1976, the first outbreak killed 88 percent of the 318 people infected. With 35 percent of Kajo Keji refugees living in a Ugandan village stricken by Ebola, IMC is building isolation camps, training medical staff, and working to secure the drugs and medical supplies necessary to manage the disease effectively if it spreads across the border.

IMC trains local residents to predict, diagnose, and treat illnesses and injuries common in South Sudan. In 2008, IMC plans to establish a medical training school designed to give the Southern Sudanese the tools necessary to manage their health care systems permanently, with or without the help of the international community. These educational programs, combined with immediate aid efforts, provide South Sudan with the individualized dedication it deserves to enable its people to recover from past struggles and those on the horizon.