The malaria outbreak in South Sudan’s Warrap state continues with health clincs in Twic County now overflowing with patients, the county commissioner said.
Commissioner Biar Biar told Radio Tamazuj that all the county health centers are beyond capacity, with an unknown number of patients dead.
“There are 25 health clinics: 24 primary health care and one main hospital operating in the county, and they are full of people,” he said. “You find three people sharing one bed in the hospital because there are too much people admitted compared to the beds available in the hospital.”
The spread of malaria in Twic adds to an outbreak in Tonj North, where at least 29 people died in July and August as drugs ran out.
Biar said the high number of cases in Warrap is also causing Twic health clinics to run short of anti-malaria medicine.
The commissioner said numerous people have died but his colleagues are still collecting the total number. He said he will have the number of malaria deaths available by tomorrow.
Biar said he has also sent a mobile team to find patients in remote bomas that have no health clinics.
The commissioner asked the state government to send a team of specialists from the ministry of health to help county health workers who are struggling to correctly identify diseases, resulting in some patients being discharged but returning to the hospital soon after.
The rise in malaria in South Sudan coincides with the rainy season because mosquitoes, which carry the disease, breed in pools of standing water.
Biar said that heavy rains earlier this month also destroyed many crops within Twic County.
Correction, 27 Aug. 2014: This article as published stated 69 people died of malaria in Tonj North; that figure should have read ’29’, as it stands in the text now.
Related:
Warrap health ministry breaks silence on malaria outbreak as deaths hit 69
Tonj North malaria outbreak kills 48 as drugs run out
Shortage of malaria medicines in Warrap state
File photo: A woman and her child at Agok Hospital (Radio Tamazuj)
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