South Sudan refugees arriving in Uganda lack medical supplies
March 25, 2014 (KAMPALA) – Medical charity Medicine sans Frontier (MSF) said on Tuesday that its health facilities for South Sudanese refugees in Uganda are running out of medicine due to the high influx of people from the three-month-old conflict.
The France-base NGO says its staff numbers are insufficient to provide health care to the fast-growing camp in the Adjumani district of Uganda.
MSF is providing antenatal care and maternity services for South Sudanese refugees to help the thousands of people who have crossed into Uganda since the conflict started in South Sudan in mid-December.
Jasper Adotus a nurse supervisor for MSF-France in the Adjumani district told Sudan Tribune that lack of staff had made their work difficult.
“We had challenges with staff and we are still working on trying to recruit many more staff to come in and we plan to have 24 hours services when we shift to our new environment. We also have some challenges with our drugs; some drugs are going out of stock because we are experiencing quite a large number of patience’s coming in”, said Adotus.
MSF is beginning to establish health centres for inpatients and outpatients as the number of South Sudanese refugees in Uganda increases.
“Our operation is pretty organised and we are going to manage the patients in these camps very well because we are not running this camp, we have other camps like Newmanzi and Baratuko and we are running it all when we have broader vision to shift to wider environment and we shall make it and we are running it all”, added Adotus the nurse supervisor.
“In one day we are seeing patients ranging from 100-150”, added Adotus.
William Mabior Deng a chairperson for refugees in Ayilo camp says there have been some improvements despite minor cases that are still in need of urgent consideration.
“Within the camp we have a lot of things but the situation is a bit improving is not like in terms of hygiene and sanitation it is improving there were some public latrines dug by UN agencies in these places”, added Deng.
Many South Sudanese children who have been forced to migrate to Uganda are not able to attend school.
Deng urged UN agencies and it development partners to speed up building learning facilities.
Over 70,000 South Sudanese have been forced to seek asylum in Uganda due to the current crisis.
(ST)