The national Ministry of Health, together with Canada and the United Nations on Tuesday started an exercise to prepare data collectors to assess maternal and neonatal health in South Sudan.
The five-day workshop is training 100 data collectors from Greater Equatoria and Jonglei in Juba, 120 from Greater Bahr El Ghazal in Wau and 60 from Upper Nile in Malakal.The head of Canadian International Development Agency, Caroline Delany, underlined the need to know the situation of the health facilities all over the country for health partners to improve maternal and child health.
She added that more comprehensive obstetric care is needed to improve maternal mortality rates in South Sudan, the worst in the world.
United Nations Population Fund or UNFPA representative Yisa Barnabas said the data collection starts next week and should be concluded by March.
Mr Barnabas called on the data collectors to pay attention to the training, be committed and see the exercise as their contribution to the development of mother-child health in the country.
He urged the staff at the health facilities across the country to cooperate by giving true information to data collectors.
Director-General of Planning and Coordination in the National Ministry of Health, Lul Pout Riek, said the training was taking place in Juba, Malakal and Wau and the data collectors should assess all health facilities in the country.
He said the ministry and health partners wanted to know whether the facilities had the right health personnel including doctors, nurses, midwives and birth attendants.
Mr Pout underlined that the health partners needed to know whether there were enough health facilities in South Sudan and if they were equally distributed in the states, counties and payams.