South Sudan grappling with high maternal mortality rates

The UN health agency said on Friday the chance of a mother in South Sudan dying during birth remains one of the highest in the world at 2,504 per 100,000 live births due to shortage of trained health workers and weak health facilities.

The Deputy Country Representative of the UN Population Fund South Sudan (UNFPA), Ibrahim Sambuli said the agency has been forced to get more trainers from outside the country to help curtail on the high mortality rates due to the low number of midwives and nurses trainers.

"If you talk about the ratio of midwives in South Sudan, you are talking of about 0.15 to 10,000 population and other countries it is about 5 to 10,000. This is not a number that we can achieve overnight it takes time because the issue of training midwives goes beyond just doing trainings it starts with the level of education," Sambuli told Xinhua in Juba.

"The illiteracy rate here is still very high so we will need the education and other sectors to work together," he during the celebration of the International Day of Midwives.

Sambuli added that there has been some gains in lowering the maternal deaths but the more than two years of civil conflict threatened to reverse these gains as attacks by gunmen on health centers and workers led to some to abscond from duty.

"We have some areas where some health facilities were destroyed, other areas some staff may have run away but with the current situation of the implementation of the peace agreement we are looking at that changing. We are likely to see some improvement because, some of these midwives even were able to go and work in areas most affected by conflict," Sambuli said.

He proposed safety first for health workers at various community levels to help support the weak health care system in the country.

"Of course there has been conflict and the government is trying to resolve that. But the most provider of safety is the community one is serving if we take this midwife to any community who appreciate their services and are able to provide the assistance required then that is the protection we are talking about," Sambuli said.

"The community should be able to come up with ways they can assist this midwife not only in terms of security but also provide basic amenities like housing and water," he added.

The Canadian and Swedish governments have committed about 38.7 million U.S. dollars and 9 million dollars respectively to train midwives and nurses for the next five years.

"It takes about 7,000 dollars per year to train a nurse. With this support we are hoping to go beyond the over 280 number of trained midwives this year," Sambuli revealed.

UNFPA is currently working on the post-conflict maternal mortality survey in order to see how much improvement has been done.

The oil rich-impoverished country has been locating less than 6 percent of its budgetary allocation to health over a decade meanwhile; defence sector takes the largest allocations at more than 35 percent of the budget.

The Abuja declaration on budget allocation by African leaders calls for budgetary allocation of not less than 15 percent to health.

The Canadian High Commissioner to South Sudan, Nicholas Coghlan, said the health care system suffers from absence of basic amenities like water and electricity as most of them rely on generator power to operate.

"You are literally giving new life to South Sudan. It is the most important job in the world and in South Sudan it's also the most difficult. We know you don't have electricity all the time," Coghlan said.

Director General Training and Development at Juba Teaching Hospital, Dr. Gabriel Daniel, assured that starting this year they will be training up to 15 nurses with support of UNFPA.

"We have recruited 280 midwives this year which has never happened since signing the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005," Gabriel revealed.

UNFPA estimates that over 70 percent of women in South Sudan give birth at home with support of traditional birth attendants which is a worrying trend. Endit