Maternal care: Dr Ohiri chats to a mother at Pibor County Hospital
This is thanks to dedicated staff who remain at work despite extremely tough conditions
Leizl Eykelhof
Under ForAfrika’s management, the Pibor County Hospital in South Sudan has celebrated a year without one maternal death.
This is remarkable since medical professionals in the country work against a backdrop of extremely poor infrastructure and equipment, conflict, climate change and vast distances – with roads disappearing in the wet season.
“We have often received visitors and they are surprised about the zero maternal death within the health facility, says Dr Patrick Ohiri, ForAfrika’s medical officer and County Health Co-ordinator.
He is in charge of the maternity block at the hospital and has been largely responsible for this favourable direction.
Vast improvements
“When we started, there were no admissions, patients came during the day and were not managed as inpatients. There were no operations conducted and mothers felt reluctant to come for antenatal care visits. However, with the good curative services and patient care that we have put in place, the number of patients coming into the hospital is on the rise, with referrals received from other health facilities and communities.
Dr Ohiri says that the most common causes of maternal death were post and ante-partum haemorrhage, sepsis and septic abortions. He attributes the reduction of deaths to encouraging mothers to come for antenatal visits, timely detection of complications and incisive decision-making.
The Pibor County Hospital is the only medical centre for miles in the Greater Pibor Administrative Area. Funded by Unicef and the World Bank, ForAfrika has been an implementing partner in its nutrition programmes and outpatient clinic for a number of years. In 2022, we took over the running of the hospital. Since then we have refurbished the only operating theatre and employed more medical staff in a bid to build local capacity. The newly built maternity block was added in 2023.
Additional services
“Additionally, we have embarked on routine immunisation outreaches in remote areas to treat children with limited access to health facilities, especially during the rainy seasons,” says Dr Ohiri.
Despite the positive changes, however, the hospital is still in desperate need of medical supplies and theatre equipment.
Dr Waleed Michael, who runs the hospital, says: “This is the only medical facility attending to all patients with varying kinds of injuries and medical conditions. There’s an urgent need to equip and restock virtually everything as the number of patients attended to at the facility has more than tripled.”
Midwife Lillian Achirochan concurs: “We are grossly understocked with medical supplies and consumables. Mothers are delivering under very tough conditions at the ward. They have to endure the pain through the delivery and after and there is barely any food for them to eat either.”
The staff, nevertheless, remain committed to their posts, sometimes walking for days to deliver medicines.
“I believe we are doing a tremendous work,” says Dr Ohiri, adding that he is motivated by his deep love for Africa and its people, especially those needing medical care in remote, hard-to-reach places like Pibor in South Sudan.
Leizl Eykelhof is Communications and Content Manager at ForAfrika
