The head of the International Red Cross says that the severity of the fighting in South Sudan coupled with the poor existing medical infrastructure has overwhelmed hospitals with wounded and sick.
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) President Peter Maurer pointed to a “constant inflow of wounded by violence” into hospitals. ICRC has four surgical teams in the country and two ready to come in.
“Those treated at the hospitals are in the many hundreds and with a continuous inflow of civilians and soldiers. I was struck to see the lack of capacities of the hospitals, where patients are lying on the bare floor, the incoming as well as the operated patients. There are no beds, there are insufficient support staff to treat, there are barely sufficient medical doctors to cater for the patients incoming,” said Maurer.
“So it’s a very dire and very difficult situation. And our surgical teams are really working around the clock but at the same time they can’t cope with the continuous influx of wounds as wells the local doctors and nurses are insufficient, and also the infrastructure insufficient.”
He declined to extrapolate as to the total number of wounded in the South Sudan conflict because many may be outside of hospitals without assistance. But he emphasized that at the hospitals there were “serious numbers (of wounded) and big challenges for the surgeons.”
Maurer was speaking to press in Juba today after visiting displaced camps in Juba and Awerial, as well as the Juba military hospital and the Bentiu hospital and South Sudan Red Cross Society in Bentiu, where ICRC is working.
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