Health experts are pushing for resolutions to declare malaria a national disaster in South Sudan.

The call emerged during the opening of the ongoing national malaria conference in Juba.

Making an opening remark, the advisor at the conference, Dr. Samson Paul Baba, said if he was given the authority, he would declare malaria a national disaster in the country.

“If you give me the authority I would say yes, Honorable Minster Malaria is a disaster and we need to do something about it and we need to go back to the way it was,” he said.

He said the country needs to rethink the old days’ approach to do something about the disease.

Meanwhile, Ahmed Ismail Julla who is the Acting Director of the National Malaria Control Program agreed with Doctor Paul.

“I can add my voice to our advisor Dr. Samson Paul Baba because this question was raised to him and he said if he was allowed to declare Malaria as a disaster in the country he would say yes, so I agree.”

Ismail said malaria is killing plenty of people in South Sudan and is hindering children from going to schools and farmers from cultivating.

“Malaria is a disaster,  it is killing plenty of people in south Sudan so it’s a disaster because people can not go to school. If you can go to work or farm, Malaria is a problem – a very big problem,” Ismail added.

The three-day conference which started yesterday is being held under the theme: “Saving lives from malaria in the protracted humanitarian emergency setting, and the launch of zero malaria campaign starts with me .”

Malaria has been one of the biggest scourges on humanity for millennia and mostly kills babies and infants.

The disease still kills more than 400,000 people a year in the world even after dramatic progress with bed nets, insecticides, and drugs.

The laboratory company, Crawford has signed a 10 million US dollar contract with the Ministry of Health to purchase equipment for Ebola prevention and screening at airports and land crossing in South Sudan.

“Actually, we did the contract with the Ministry of Health. There’s a list of a lot of equipment, and a lot of gaps that need to be fulfilled, not only training,” Doctor Deng Daniel, Crawford’s Operation Manager revealed to Eye Radio Wednesday.

The invoice addressed to Health Minister Yolanda Awel, seen by Eye Radio indicated that Crawford requires 3,469, 000 to establish six points of entry to ensure the detection, management, and referral of ill travelers.

Crawford will use part of this money to provide operational support to port health at the Nimule border and Juba International airport, design, print and disseminate gate passes as well as train the workforce to implement the activities, among others.

Meanwhile, 2,598,300 dollars be used for the enhancement of laboratory testing equipment and the workforce at national and states levels.

The company also invoiced 4,000,000 US dollars to procure personal protective kits for health workers, IPC training, reagents, and consumables for the health ministry.

“It’s also for some reagents and the equipment to be brought from abroad. And it will take almost one year to be bringing all these reagents and all these items,” Deng said.

Crawford, according to Deng, has started training staff from the ministry of health in accordance with the agreement

“We are now starting a six-day [training]for the entry point of the airport, with the participation of the WHO, ICAP, and Ministry of Health under Dr. John Romanu, and he’s part of this training this week.”

Daniel added that the contract has a lot of items and will be gradually accomplished in the long term.

It’s not clear where the process was subjected to bidding.

Crawford Proposal-4

In September, the Council of Ministers allocated 500,000 US dollars as funds for the mitigation and prevention of Ebola following a reported outbreak of the virus in Uganda.

The re-constituted national parliament has called off sittings this week to mourn the passing on of a member over the weekend.

“So it came out at the leadership position that it is not actually wise and good enough for people to continue conducting the sittings and then our MP is laying in the mortuary,” John Agany, the Chairperson of the Information Committee in the parliament told Eye Radio Wednesday morning,

Veronica Luis who represents Tambura County, Western Equatoria state, died on Saturday after a short illness.

Today, the MPs canceled a sitting to pay their last respect to the deceased colleague before her remains are flown to her home village in Tambura for burial.

“So people decided that we should postpone the sitting until the next arrangements are done for the burial. So, today she will be brought to the National Legislative Assembly premises,”

“And then after the prayer, she will be fallen to her homeland to be for burial,”

On Monday, a similar parliamentary session was postponed after the parliament received the body of the late veteran politician Serafino Wani Swaka for viewing.

Honorable Agany said the August house was considering conducting extraordinary sittings to compensate for the lost days.

“Definitely this week, we will be occupied pre-maturely with funerals that are taking place.”

The postponed sittings were meant to discuss some drafted laws and a report by the Specialized Security Committee.