By Gladys Fred Kole
Zain Telecommunication Company has donated 10,000 US Dollars to Juba Teaching Hospital as part of its cooperate social responsibility to the community.
The money is meant to help the government institution retain the only CT scan machine which has been down for a period of two months now.
A CT scan is one of the investigative tools that is used to diagnose diseases, for instance, brain injury or stroke to know the extent of the injury and bleeding in the brain or even the body.
Speaking to the media at the handover ceremony, the Director of Juba Teaching Hospital Dr. Isaac Maker, expressed his gratitude for the support that the telecom company has rendered at this critical moment, proving that they are not only here to make money.
“The CT scan that is broken down is the only one as it has been helping millions of people, now it has been down for two months,” Maker said.
“We don’t have resources to even acquire a new one that’s worth more than one million USD. Am shocked the people who I thought would have been the first to come for our rescue didn’t show up but you [Zain] did,” the hospital director exclaimed.
The CT scan was donated by the Chinese government as part of the China aid project.
Bu Dr. Maker hinted that the kind of electricity Juba has for powering the CT scan is completely different from the one in China which he claimed might have contributed to the machine breakdown.
“We don’t have anyone here who can fix it (CT scan), but they brought a technician from Kenya he works with the company that brought the machine and he can fix it in a day if the money is available” Isaac stated.
The Medical Director stated that out of the 13 requests he made to different business entities, only Zain and the Chinese government responded.
According to him, the defect found in the machine cost about 60,000 USD that the hospital doesn’t have adding they can’t also afford to operate without the machine.
“But so far we have received half of that,”
For his part the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Zain South Sudan Eng. Khalid A. Moniem said that their contribution is small compared to the request the hospital made, it is not going to be the last.
We are going to continue because we know the importance of the hospital to the community, whenever we can always be available, we know the health sector is a big priority” he hinted.
“I went myself and saw the number of people who are visiting the hospital and its capabilities that are why we decided to help, we saw the reality on the ground” Khalid added.
James Bol, the commercial director of the telecommunication company reiterated that Zain always stands with the community and government to make sure that services are delivered to the people.
“As Zain, it’s not the first-time kind of giving back to the community we do believe in cooperate social responsibility where we can pay back, we are part, we just want the CT scan in its good state to help people,” he said.