Medics warn of growing virus outbreak in SSudan

South Sudan was never going to be ready for COVID-19. Five years of civil war and corruption stripped away much of its health system. Now some workers at the country's only lab testing for the virus have been infected, along with more than 50 healthworkers. Some people have died waiting for rapid-response teams to arrive. It began with a dry cough, weakness and back pain. For Reagan Taban Augustino, part of South Sudan's small corps of healthworkers trained in treating COVID-19 patients, there was little doubt what he had. Days later, hardly able to breathe, the 33-year-old doctor discovered just how poorly equipped his country is for the coronavirus pandemic. None of the public facilities he tried in the capital, Juba, had oxygen supplies available until he reached South Sudan's only permanent infectious disease unit, which has fewer than 100 beds for a country of 12 million people. It took more than an hour to admit him. "I was almost dying at the gate," he told The Associated Press from the unit last week. The pandemic is now accelerating in Africa, the World Health Organization has said. While the continent had more time than Europe and the United States to prepare before its first case was confirmed on February 14, experts feared many of its health systems would eventually become overwhelmed. South Sudan, a nation with more military generals than doctors, never had a fighting chance. Five years of civil war and corruption stripped away much of its health system, and today non-governmental organisations provide the majority of care. Nearly half of the population was hungry before the pandemic. Deadly insecurity continues, and a locust outbreak arrived just weeks before the virus. When world leaders talk about the pandemic not being over until it's over everywhere, they are talking about places like South Sudan. The United Nations has said the country's outbreak is growing rapidly, with nearly 1,900 cases, including more than 50 health workers infected, more than 30 deaths and no way to know the true number of infections. At South Sudan's only laboratory that tests for the virus, supervisor Simon Deng Nyichar said the team of 16 works up to 16-hour days slogging through a backlog of more than 5,000 tests. Around 9,000 samples have been tested since early April, when the country became one of the last in Africa to confirm a coronavirus case. With materials in short supply, testing is largely limited to people with symptoms of COVID-19. It can take weeks to receive results. Three lab workers have been infected and recovered, Nyichar told the AP. "Even half of us get infection, we will continue doing our work, because we are saving the nation." With the long hours, they work in pairs to stay sharp. While they're aware of the dangers, South Sudan's population at large still takes convincing. The government's loosening of lockdown measures last month was "perceived as an indication that the disease is not in South Sudan," the Health Ministry said. Bars, restaurants and shops are open after people said they feared hunger more than the disease. Some people have died waiting for rapid-response teams to arrive, the ministry said. And this month it stopped issuing "COVID-19 negativity certificates," citing the peddling of fake ones — especially around Juba International Airport. Meanwhile the virus has spread into more rural areas, including one of the United Nations-run camps upcountry where more than 150,000 civilians still shelter after South Sudan's civil war ended in 2018. There's been an increase in deaths related to respiratory tract infections at that camp in Bentiu, WHO official Wamala Joseph told reporters last week, though it's not clear whether they were from the virus. Testing is difficult as all samples must be flown to the capital. Three of the six camps have no virus screening at the gate, according to a U.N. migration agency document dated this month. One camp has no facility to isolate the sick, and another will only have one when a generator is installed. Meanwhile "our hospitals are full," Wolde-Gabriel Saugeron, who leads the International Committee of the Red Cross' team in Bor, wrote last week. "COVID-19 means that we need to create more space between our hospital beds, which has reduced the number of people we can accommodate in our wards by 30%." The pandemic is also worsening what was already a major problem in South Sudan: hunger. Most border crossings are closed, and food prices in the markets have shot up. Now the rain season has started, making transport and storage more difficult. More than 1.5 million people in South Sudan are newly vulnerable, including the urban poor who had not been receiving aid before, the U.N. humanitarian agency said last week.

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Medics warn of growing virus outbreak in SSudan

South Sudan was never going to be ready for COVID-19. Five years of civil war and corruption stripped away much of its health system.

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