The South Sudan Programme
For the people of Sudan, 2005 has been a year of changes, challenges, and uncertainty. January was a month of celebration due to the signing of the comprehensive peace agreement. In July the South Sudanese saw their leader, John Garang, inaugurated as the First Vice President of Sudan. August began with mourning after John Garang's death in a helicopter crash. Salva Kiir was named as Garang's successor and the Unity Government of Sudan is to come into existence in the near future.
After nearly 21 years of civil war, most of South Sudan lacks infrastructure, and continues to have some of the worst social indicators in the world in nutrition, education, access to water, mother/child health, and outbreaks of common preventable diseases. Thousands continue to die unnecessarily and suffer immeasurably. It is in these difficult conditions that Medair continues to respond in order to save lives and alleviate the suffering in South Sudan.
Medair Projects in South Sudan
The programs focus mainly on the areas of Bahr El Ghazal, the Jonglei, Sobat and the Upper Nile regions and are Multi-Sectoral. The directly targeted number of beneficiaries is around 53,000, but this figure does not include he number of people who will be assisted through emergency interventions in the region.
The projects are roughly divided in medical projects, water and sanitation, and emergency interventions when needed.
Medical Mobile Response Team
The objective of the Mobile Response Team is to improve provision and access to health care services through supporting primary health care initiatives, rapid emergency response and increasing local management capacity. Specifically:
- Primary health care;
- Focus on maternal child healthcare through preventative, promotional and curative care;
- Emergency medical response coverage in Upper Nile and other emergency areas for medical crisis involving outbreaks, mass people movements and nutritional emergencies;
- Capacity building for health management.
Water and Sanitation
Key objectives are:
Some Figures of South Sudan
| Population | 11,000,000 |
| Beneficiairies | 190,000 |
| GDP per capita ($) | 557 |
| Life expectency (years) | 42 |
| Child mortality (per 1000) | 145 |
| Medair staff | 20 internationally recruited staff |
| 32 Kenyan staff | |
| 157 Sudanese staff | |
| Main donors | UNICEF |
| DDC (Swiss government) | |
| SIDA (Swedish government) | |
| Buza (Dutch government) | |
| OFDA (US government) | |
| ECHO (European Community) |