Gershon Kedar, Israeli Ambassador to South Sudan (right) and Mayik Ayii Deng, Minister of Foreign Affairs in Juba. | 1st September 2022. | Photo: Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The Israeli government officially opened a brand-new Intensive Care Unit department worth nearly one million US dollars at the Juba Teaching Hospital on Thursday.

The facility was inaugurated in the presence of senior government officials and Israeli delegation to Juba yesterday.

Ambassador Eynat Shlein is the head of the Israeli Agency for International Development Cooperation said the unit will first be operated by an Israeli medical team in the country.

“We donated to the hospital the entire unit, we build it from scratch to the top with the equipment and we brought a delegation of physicians to do capacity-building training for the hospital staff and doctors, who will operate this unit,” said Shlein.

The team comprising physicians are tasked to train the hospital staff including doctors, nurses and paramedics to operate the facility.

According to the the Israeli diplomat, the initiative is partly her country’s support to strengthen bilateral relations between the two countries.

Ambassador Eynat Shlein spoke to Eye Radio in an exclusive interview before she departing to Israel on Thursday.

“So, this is a project which symbolized the friendship between Israel and South Sudan, we are very happy that for have opportunity to present it,” she said.

“This is only one token of the friendship, and I would say in general that it cost nearly one million dollars.”

The diplomat disclosed that her country will take four South Sudanese children with heart complications to Israel for surgical operation in October.

The unnamed children will be facilitated Save a Child Heart, an Israeli Non-Governmental Organization.

Bilateral relations between the then southern region of Sudan and Israel began in the late 1960s, after the leaders of the former Anyanya 1 movement waged an insurrection against the northern government.