A malaria-typhoid outbreak has killed 48 people in Tonj North, Warrap, South Sudan, county commissioner Marko Wuoc Kuot said Tuesday.
Kuot told Radio Tamazuj that the Alabek payam sub chief Tong Malueth was among the dead.
“I can say the malaria indicator has reach a terrible level in the county because about 48 people including sub-chief Tong Malueth died of malaria disease in Alabek payam in late July,” he said.
Kuot said the county has run out of anti-malaria drugs as government-owned and private health facilities are overcrowded with malaria patients.
He said he has alerted the State Ministry of Health and is working closely with international charity World Vision to control the outbreak.
“We also raised the same complaint to the doctor in charge of pharmaceuticals in the state. He came to visit us recently. Maybe he is now working on it,” he said.
The commissioner said he has not yet received any health reports from other payams in the county.
Kuot said poor roads connecting remote payams is affecting the transfer of patients to the county headquarters.
He urged authorities and health organizations to provide anti-malaria drugs to the patients in the county as soon as possible.
Government clinics in Northern Bahr al Ghazal have also run of malarai drugs, according to that state’s director of pharmaceutical services.
File photo: A woman and her child at Agok Hospital (Radio Tamazuj)
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