By Bida Elly David
The national Minister of Labour has stated that the country’s status of having insufficient medical facilities has contributed to death of many government officials and citizens.
He spoke during the last funeral rite prayers of the late Minister of water and irrigation Peter Manawa who died after being flown to Egypt for medication.
Recently, citizens across the country raised their concerns to the government for the improvement of health services and facilities in most public hospitals across the Country. They said, most patients have been battling access to medicines after prescription by specialized doctors in government hospitals but patients ended up being served with pain killing drugs which dictates correspondence to medical complication.
Many death cases in both public and private hospitals have been transpiring due to lack of medicines and advance health facilities that could mitigate citizens from being referred to foreign countries.
Speaking to the crowd recently, James Hoth Mai the national Minister of labour said that late Manawa and his colleague being good and loyal leaders would have not died if the country has good and enough medical facilities.
Furthermore, James reiterated that government needed to invest much of their efforts towards improving the health sector to avoid referral of citizens and government officials to foreign Countries for emergency treatment.
“The death of Manawa and his other colleague in the government has taught us a lesson that we need to pay a special attention to our health services. Manawa was sick and we had to fly him four hours to Egypt and if we have good health facilities in South Sudan, we could have saved his life. So it is very important for us as a government to improve our health facilities and we should seriously take note of that” he said.
In continuation, Minister Mai underscored that late response by government officials and citizens to medical treatment after intensification of health complication was one of the causes to death and suffering in the country.
“It is a message to all of us being government officials and the entire citizens at large. We need to be cautious about our health at earlier stage before it could graduate to late stage and early checkup is very crucial as that matter of fact for the good of our health. Most importantly, there is much need for the health department and the government to clearly look into ways through which citizens should not go and seek medical services from foreign countries’’ he said.