World Health Organization or WHO and other health partners are appealing for funds to meet South Sudan’s priority needs this year including the expansion of primary health care services beyond the UN Protection of Civilians areas.
Other needs include revival and expansion of secondary health services, especially surgical, reproductive health and mental health care in the conflict affected areas.
WHO said the priority needs would include control and prevention of communicable diseases, especially strengthening early warning and response capacity, prepositioning of emergency drugs in the conflict affected states, monitoring and supervision of health services delivery.
It said the services are not possible without funding, requiring 90 million US Dollars out of South Sudan’s 1.81 billion Dollar request in the 2015 Strategic Response Plan.
WHO stated that the cluster received to date seven million US Dollars, representing a meager eight percent of the total request, leaving a huge gap of 92 percent.
It warned that major epidemics communicable disease would remain high and that millions of IDPs would not have access to health services, no stock of drugs and pipeline breaks.
According to the 2015 Strategic Response Plan, an estimated 6.4 million people need various forms of humanitarian assistance in 2015.