South Sudan’s Juba Teaching Hospital will have electricity once again after going four weeks without power due to a fuel shortage, health ministry undersecretary Makur Matur Koryom said Tuesday.
Koryom told reporters at the hospital that the finance ministry has already given 4360 liters of fuel to run the hospital’s generators for three days before a second load arrives to last another month.
The hospital has been out of fuel for four weeks due to the high cost of fuel, according to media reports. The fuel shortage resulted in a halting of many regular hospital operations, but hospital director John Chol denied that the fuel shortage caused of deaths of children at the facility.
Media reports said ten people including premature babies died in December when the facility had no electricity, citing hospital staff.
Koryom said the hospital’s morgue can reopen with the provision of electricity. Bodies had been sent to a military hospital since there was no electricity for refrigeration at JTH.
Health ministry undersecretary Makur Matur Koryom (R) and Juba Teaching Hospital director general John Chol (L) speak to press