Submitted by sherron on Sun, 2010-08-22 00:00

The weather in Duk is changing, but the workload is not.

Since May, the rains have become more and more intense. They paused for a week recently, but restarted with a vengeance the other day as soon as a supply plane landed on the dirt airstrip in Duk Payuel. It was a mixed blessing—good for the crops that are now growing around Duk, yet bad because of the problems the intense flooding brings.  Problems such as a spike in Malaria and other water related diseases and the cutting off of travel around the region for the Clinic’s outreach team.

 

I landed in Duk just as a heavy downpour came in. We walked through several inches of rain to get to the Clinic from the airstrip, which was nearly flooded. The pilots of the small charter plane miraculously took off. Still suffering from jet-lag, I woke up twice in the middle of the night to the Clinic’s guard rousing the nurse and midwives. There were two deliveries in one night—a year ago we may have gotten two deliveries in a month. 

I spent a good part of the first day talking with the Clinic’s devoted midwives. I was so impressed. We have one nurse-midwife, Caroline, from Kenya, who works alongside a local Sudanese community midwife, Akech. We were able to hire Akech in June. Trained South Sudanese midwives are very few, and so to have one is a great benefit to the Clinic and the community. Akech is also learning and growing a lot from working alongside, Caroline, our more experienced and trained nurse-midwife. The two have been working incredibly hard—frequently up all night for a late-night delivery, and then in their consultation room the next morning providing daily consultations to mothers. The community has become so happy with the delivery services offered by the Clinic that many mothers have named their babies Caroline. 

As one of the all-too-few places in South Sudan providing this kind of quality, life-saving care, it’s an example to what the future for South Sudan’s health system can be. It’s one of the ways in which JDF is transforming health care in South Sudan.