By Mary Poni
The Minister of Health has pronounced and pledged half a million US dollars to fight malaria in the country.
Minister Yolanda Awel Deng announced the pledges during the closing of the malaria conference on how to overcome malarial under the theme; Zero Malaria in South Sudan Starts with Me”, held in Juba.
She said that from the budget of 2022 to 2023, she has pledged on behalf of the Ministry of Health half a million (500,000) US Dollars to fight malaria.
“I would like to stress that the ministry of health is making sure to be committed to delivering quality health services with the limited resources that we have.”
It’s the first malaria control conference as well as the scientific conference held in the country so far.
“We have a lot of setbacks in health system but one thing I’m sure of is that we are moving slowly to the sustainability,” she said “Now that there is a recommendation, led there be workable and achievable means to implement this point of action.”
She said every single department at the Ministry of Health are not going to be forgotten because they are part of the process.
The Vice President for Service Delivery Cluster, Hussein Abdelbagi Akol, said the current budget for health is only 4% of the national annual budget yet the budget declaration demands the African countries to allocate 15% of the national annual budget.
“Last year the government did not manage to do that but starting from the supplementary budget and next year budget, they are going to make sure that they raise the budget of the Ministry of Health to 10% until they make it to 15%,” he noted.
Abdelbagi said everyone knows that malaria is the number one killer disease in the country thought it is treatable and preventable.
“If every family in the country witnessed and suffered of malaria, the estimate made in a month of people who died of malaria in the country is around six hundred 600 and in a year is around seven thousand and two hundred which is a very tragic problem in the country”.
“I hope with the recommendation that we made; I am quite sure that the percent will reduce to zero because we are going to work on stopping it,” he noted.
The VP said there are no families that didn’t suffer from malaria as it is estimated as said earlier that at least twenty people are dying every day and it is a very big risk to the entire country.
Since Covid-19 broke out, the country lost at least one hundred and thirty-eight people yet in Malaria is six hundred, hence, Covid-19 is fairer than malaria thought both are of serious concerns,” Abdelbagi said.
Pregnant women and children under the age of five years old are the most risked once.
In 2021, the government through the ministry of health developed national malaria strategic plan for 2022 to 2025 with the ambition of having malaria preventable and reducing malaria causes of death by 80% by 2025.