By Akol Madut Ngong
The national ministry of health and its partner institutions have launched a five-year strategic plan on cholera prevention, an official has said.
The Director General in the ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation, Peter Mangar said in an inclusive interview that they are attending a three-day workshop with other line ministries organized by the ministry of health under the title: “the preparedness of cholera and response for strategy development for the next five year”.
“This strategy attracting different pillars, pillar on case management, pillar on WASH which we are part as the ministry of water resources to addressing the issue of cholera, you need to have water in quantity and in quality, we have some issue related to sanitation and hygiene, all these three aspects are key addressing the public health regarding to cholera intervention,” Mr. Mangar said.
He stated that the other institutions attending the workshop includes; Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management, Ministry of Health, Water Resource and Irrigation, Ministry of Gender, Child and Social Welfare, and other Health Humanitarian Partners which include WHO, UNICEF, IOM and the health cluster as they prepare themselves for response to cholera outbreak.
In addition, the official said that ministry of water is a key partner to deal with the provision of safe clean drinking water, and safe access to sanitation facilities.
He said there are areas that are being call packages to cholera, there are 20 counties that have the issue of flooding, and these flooding are definitely submerging water point.
“The water point is all collapse and the population are not accessing safe drinking water that was provided previously when there was no flood, so the population became vulnerable and there is a need to addressing this issue by putting a plan that can generate same funding whether from the government or from the international organisations to address that matter because after the flooding the outbreak of cholera immediately come up,” the official stressed.
Mr. Mangar noted that they already have one of the counties, that is Rubkona County in Unity State.
He said partners are the one implementing all the issues related to cholera, adding that the State are being affected with floods are Lake, Unity, Pibor Administrative Area and Central Equatoria State.
“When your population are affected and your water facilities are already submerged, make sure that the water you are consuming, make effort to boil a water, don’t take it as a row, don’t wait for the clean water to be provide to you, the water is there, boiled them and used, it will be priorities when you boiled. You will be healthy if you consuming a boiled water, you need a caution when you are drinking,” he further stated.