Courtesy Photo

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.