Southern Sudan - Medair brings life-saving relief to vulnerable residents in two displacement camps, providing safe drinking water and increasing access to hygienic sanitation.
In early August 2007, Medair sent a multisectoral emergency response team of eight people to the town of Renk, Upper Nile, after severe flooding resulted in two deaths and left thousands homeless.
After a rapid assessment by health and water & sanitation (WatSan) specialists, the scale of the problem soon became clear: lack of proper sanitation and inadequate clean water were the two major problems, ones that could lead to an outbreak of disease in the camps.
Within a week and a half, the WatSan team established two emergency water treatment systems, providing both entire camp populations with at least 5 litres of water per person per day. This equates to approximately 40 000 litres per day that has been pumped and purified, at a rate of 4000 litres/hour. Medair also assisted in building 75 latrines in cooperation with Mercy Corps and TearFund.
The health team trained 21 people to deliver hygiene promotion, who then went into the camps, providing information to all of the displaced population about the importance and the methods of maintaining good hygiene practice, which includes safe water handling and personal hygiene/cleanliness as to prevent oral-faecal transmission of diarrhoeal disease. Medair will hand over the supervision of the water systems and latrines to the NGO's on ground in the next couple of days, we can leave with one of the camp leaders words: "Thank you so much for bringing "medicines for the water" and making the people aware of the need of proper sanitation".
Part of the team will remain on ground so as to evaluate the camp water usage, and ensure the systems are being operated correctly.
On 20 July 2007, the government of Southern Sudan declared a state of disaster in six states of Sudan due to the floods. In collaboration with UNICEF and Mercy Corps, Medair's first response supplied families in and around the town of Renk with more than 3,000 Non Food Item (NFI) kits, including blankets, water containers, mosquito nets, and cooking utensils.
Medair will continue to monitor rainfall and flood alerts, prepared to intervene where most needed.
Medair is an international non-governmental organisation (NGO), with its operational headquarters located in Switzerland. Its Relief & Rehabilitation programmes in Southern Sudan have been running since 1992.
In Southern Sudan, Medair provides emergency medical and water assistance for outbreaks, large people movements, and nutritional emergencies in a number of locations across the region as well as improving access to primary health care and safe water sources in Upper Nile. In the northern states, Medair provides access to primary health care and water and sanitation for up to 210,000 conflict-affected persons in West Darfur; works with war-displaced people in Khartoum; and supports access to primary health care in the Nuba Mountains in South Kordofan.
Medair's work in Southern Sudan is currently supported with the assistance of UNICEF, DFID (British Government), BUZA (Dutch Government), SDC/DDC (Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation), The Humanitarian Aid Department of the European Commission (ECHO), ERF (Emergency Response Fund/UNDP administrated by OCHA) and the United Nation 'Common Humanitarian Fund for Sudan.'
Medair's life-saving activities are also dependent upon private financial support. To contribute to this work, please visit www.medair.org (Southern Sudan section.)