LOCATION: JUBA, Republic of South Sudan
START OF ACTIVITY: 2006
OBJECTIVE: improvement of maternal and child health in the city of Juba, South Sudan
ORIGIN OF THE COMMITMENT: To cope with the precarious health conditions of the population of the city of Juba, a small pediatric dispensary was opened in 1989. After the signing of the peace treatment between the Government of Sudan and the Liberation Army of South Sudan, which took place on January 9, 2005, at the request of the local government itself, OVCI launches the first health development program.
COMMITMENT DESCRIPTION: The Dispensary of the Usratuna Center is part of a broader program that involves other Dispensaries present in the territory of Juba. The commitment begins with the physical restructuring of the facilities, the distribution of drugs and the training of personnel. At the request of the Ministry of Health of the newborn Government of South Sudan, in 2011, OVCI offered to strengthen the four main basic health centers of the city (one of which is that of the Usratuna Center). This commitment is aimed at decongesting the county hospital - the Juba Teaching Hospital - which is increasingly overcrowded. Central to the health interventions promoted by OVCI is the promotion of maternal and infant health, with the aim of reducing maternal and infant mortality, and reducing the incidence of disability at an early age. For this reason, the services offered by the Dispensary of the Usratuna Center and the Health Centers followed by our projects have been strengthened over the years.
The Dispensary of the Usratuna Center offers a specialist analysis laboratory service, a prenatal ultrasound service, a pre and post-natal assistance service. Another service of excellence managed by the Dispensary is the Epilepsy Service, the only one of its kind in all of South Sudan.
Since December 2017, thanks to a research project led by the E. Medea Institute in Bosisio Parini (LC), the Epilepsy Service has begun to welcome patients with Noddyng syndrome, a very severe type of children epilepsy, present exclusively in South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda and the causes of which are not yet known. It begins with epileptic seizures of "falling" of the head, which seems to be dangling, then a progressive cognitive dysfunction, loss of language and appetite, increase in epileptic seizures appears.
In 2014 a Mobile Clinic service was launched, which offers basic health services, both for the distribution of drugs and for nursing services, and reports the patients visited with particular pathologies to the appointed health services. It is an essential service, especially for the most vulnerable groups of the population (women, children, the elderly and people with disabilities), because it is the only active service in the entire State of Jubek and allows you to reach a slice of the population that otherwise would not have access to first care. The improvement of the context has made it possible to develop this emergency service towards direct support to stable dispensaries (through the CURE project) to which communities previously accessible only via mobile clinic belong.
In collaboration with the Mobile Clinic Service, we can guarantee a specific nutritional program for children, pregnant and lactating women in a state of medium-severe malnutrition.
ACTIVE PROJECTS
