Stories
November 18, 2017 • 2 min read
“I was so excited when my daughter received the drugs. There was a health facility in Ganga, near to where I lived, but they did not have the drugs.”
"Four years after conflict broke out in South Sudan, the people there continue to suffer."
Four years after conflict broke out in South Sudan, the people there continue to suffer. Currently, 5.5 million people are severely food insecure;1.89 million people are internally displaced from their homes,with 2.1 million people living as refugees in neighbouring countries.
GOAL has been operating in South Sudan since 1985, and is currently operational in the Upper Nile and Warrap states, and the Abyei Administrative Area. Healthcare and nutrition makes up the vast majority of GOAL’s interventions and we support hundreds of thousands of people each year. To truly understand the impact our work has on a day-to-day basis, however, sometimes you have to listen to the story of person, or one family.
Currently, GOAL supports two primary healthcare facilities in the counties of Mijak and Rumamer in Abyei Administrative Area, a contested area of land between South Sudan and Sudan. Abyei is home to a sizeable number of displaced communities, and disease is commonplace.
Of the 28 health facilities in the region, just 12 are operational. After the rainy season started over the summer, the area experienced an unexpected increase in the number of malaria cases. As they were unprepared for this, the local Ministry of Health and NGO health facilities quickly ran out of medicine to treat malaria.
Thanks to a donation received from the East Africa Fund, the two clinics that GOAL supports received adequate supplies and people from remote areas began travelling to both facilities for treatment.
Adua, a young mother from Tajalei Boma in Mijak Payam, was one such person. When her daughter came down with a fever, Adua feared that she had malaria and worried that she wouldn’t be able to find medicine for her daughter. She walked for an hour to bring her to the GOAL-supported Rumamer clinic, after hearing that there were malaria medicines there.
Adua’s daughter was treated on arrival. Adua was very thankful to GOAL for their help in providing anti-malaria drugs to her daughter.
“I was so excited when my daughter received the drugs. There was a health facility in Ganga, near to where I lived, but they did not have the drugs.”
This is just one small example of the impact that GOAL’s work has in South Sudan.
