South Sudan Red Cross Torit branch is training its staff and volunteers on how to control epidemic diseases.
Speaking to Radio Emmanuel, South Sudan Red Cross Health officer Madellena Jusan Mawe says the training aims at building the capacity of its members on how to response to epidemic outbreak in the country.
Jusan says early response to epidemic helps reduce death rate.
‘So this training is very necessary especially for the volunteers to help them response during crisis. As you see Torit has been experiencing crisis before an outbreak and South Sudan volunteers have been participating with government and other Ngo and responding to these volunteers. So we took this initiative of building their capacity and strengthen them on how to response when there is emergency outbreak in Torit or else in South Sudan to prepare. Earlier we trained our volunteers to be prepared so that if anything happens at any time, early response reduces the rate of death and wide spread’.
Madellena also adds that epidemic diseases like cholera have high chances of outbreak due to too much rainfall and continuous flooding.
‘We have identify diarrhoea especially cholera which is at the peak because as you know there is much rainfall these year. We hope it is not so. There are floods and flood also usually result to un epidemic outbreak like cholera because of the sanitation and condition of the population also we think of measles can cause outbreak in our region so that’s why we are preparing them on how to response to these diseases when an outbreak happens’.
Meanwhile South Sudan Red Cross Health officer Ojwe Denis Abuna from Ikwoto says the training helps volunteers to create awareness on the signs and symptoms of epidemic diseases in their community.
‘Because since 2014 we have been experiencing outbreak of cholera and 2018 there is suspected case of monazites were the country are already facing and also I look at this training because very important because it build up the volunteers and staff so that they will be able to do community base awareness from community level because these volunteers were selected from community so they will be able identify bass on sign and symptom so that they can easily report and they will be able to go to community to carry out awareness so that people can protect them self from those’.
The speakers made the remarks to Radio Emmanuel today at Torit guest house.