Emergency Response in South Sudan

After a series of progressively shrinking airports and UN planes, I landed on the dirt runway in Kuajok. Waiting at the airport-- if you can call four sticks with a tin roof an airport, were Wori and Simon from my team. I was joining a team of 9 people that had already been in the field for about a week, 7 from the ERT health team, and 2 from the ERT nutrition team, to respond to a measles outbreak in the area. Already there had been over 100 suspected cases of measles and one death in Gogrial West County. We were setting out to vaccinate over 75,000 kids for measles, and at the same time screen them for malnutrition. Even by ERT standards, this is a big project.  The whole effort would take 99 teams of 8 people, 6 days of vaccination. Medair took responsibility for implementing vaccination, with support from the Ministry of Health, World Vision, and UNICEF.  Coldbox for vaccine and icepacks being stored in a Tukul. Measles vaccine is very particular; it has to be ...

After a week of training in at the Medair Global Support Office (GSO) in Switzerland, and a day at the team house in Nairobi, I finally arrived in Juba, South Sudan. Stepping onto the tarmac at Juba airport is the near equivalent of stepping into an oven set to broil. Juba is large by South Sudanese standards, but small by comparison to other capital cities around the globe. In the southwest, a lone mountain, Djebel, is the only disruption to the otherwise flat landscape. Juba has the feeling of people hurrying. It could be due to the relentless heat, or the memory of recent war, but people generally don’t slow down until they are safely behind the walls separating most buildings and houses. Our compound contains our team house, our office, and our warehouse. So the majority of living and working is done from within our walls. About 30 people are staying in the house, and many Medair staff members stopover there on their way to-and-from the field. It’s an incredibly int...