Ginaba Lino
About 2.4 percent of the population in Malakal town of Upper Nile State received their COVID-19 Jabs through the World-Bank project community mobilization.
The Acting Chief of field officer of UNICEF Lagu Tolbert Unziku states that the support of World Bank through UNICEF to Upper Nile has been tremendous since the provision of essential health care services was launched in 2019.
He says through the same project, UNICEF started COVID-19 emergency response in which they mobilize community members to move from one place to another with the information of COVID-19 vaccine.
“We have a new program now rename has COVID-19 emergency respond and preparedness health system project started. The new extension had now five components; out of the five components we have the first has the vaccine deployment, the one that is implemented only in Upper Nile is the provision essential health care service which focuses on high impact maternal and until child health. It is implemented in a number of health facilities across Malakal.”
Tolbert pointed out that UNICEF faced some challenges of flooding across the state which disabled them from delivering services.
He called on partners and the Health Ministry to join hands to repair some of the damaged primary health care centres or to construct new ones.
According to the acting chief of field officer, about nine health facilities have been displaced as a result of flooding in Upper Nile State.
“There have been flooding for example for the last three years, flooding has been devastated and displaced and case a lot of devastation across the state and some of the facilities were displaced and some of them are still under water has we talk and this affects the project because some areas are un-accessible.”
Head of the community mobilizers in Malakal, Nyok Daniel, says their work is to raise awareness about COVID-19 vaccine through the World Bank project from UNICEF and IMC.
He says the team is not focusing only on COVID-19 alone, but also raises awareness on issues to do with protection, education and help mothers to breastfeed their children in the right way.
Daniel explains that they are able to resolve the issues of children affected by polio and after the awareness the mothers realized the importance of polio vaccine.
“Not only that IMC team they are working hard in the field of EPI, we were having issue to with children who are affected from polio, and during the massive awareness now Mothers are turning up to take their kids to the vaccination so this project of World Bank has really help a lot in the field of expanded program in humanization because now we don’t have more polio outbreak and all other diseases that affect children so these are the thing I can say about IMC work in this project of World Bank.”
He appreciates UNICEF and partners for the World Bank project, calls on other partners to support UNICEF to continue with the project.
In September 09, 2021, the World Bank and UNICEF collaborated to implement a 53.5 million US Dollar project in South Sudan, focusing on coronavirus vaccine deployment in the country.
The objective of the campaign is to highlight the need for continued investment in the health sector as South Sudan has some of the lowest indicators globally for infant and child mortality, malnutrition, and access to basic health services.
Preventable diseases like malaria, diarrhoea, pneumonia continue to exact a heavy toll on children and women nationwide.
The communication campaign will highlight the importance of various health interventions, including immunization campaigns and the vaccination against COVID-19
Since 2018, the Ministry of Health, the World Bank and UNICEF have been working together to implement a World Bank-financed health sector project that provides essential maternal and child health services in Jonglei and Upper Nile States.