Médecins Sans Frontières or MSF has started setting up a 30-bed hospital and a referral system in Ulang town of Upper Nile to address the needs of people affected by war and inter-communal violence.
‘Due to the conflict, many people living in this area between frontlines have been forced to move, often several times’, says Abdallah Hussein, MSF’s head of mission in South Sudan.
He in a statement adds that ‘Many have been displaced to Ethiopia and remain there in refugee camps; others have come back to find there are no longer services or livelihoods.’
Hussein says MSF’s aim is to provide secondary healthcare to very vulnerable people affected by recurrent outbreaks of different kinds of violence.
‘We see a lot of mothers and children coming to the hospital,’ says Madeleine Walder, MSF’s field coordinator in Ulang.
‘They have usually come a long way, often arriving in a critical condition because they have had to wait so long to reach a health facility, she explains.
‘We treat people for severe malaria and for gunshot wounds because of the ongoing intercommunal violence. We also very often treat quite complicated co-infected cases of TB and HIV in patients, the coordinator says.
MSF teams are engaging with local communities to explain the main diseases that people should be aware of and when to seek treatment.