Government and WHO officials pose for a group photo with during the launch in Juba on Thursday, December 10, 2020. Credit|Charles Wote/Eye Radio

South Sudan has launched a four-year health plan to prevent, detect and respond to any public health threats in the country.

The plan launched in partnership with the World Health Organization will run from 2020 – 2024.

It is expected to build the national capacity for resiliency.

“What we are embarking on today is what –in healthcare –we call risk management,” declared Dr. Mayen Machut Achiek, the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Health.

The 85-pages National Action Plan for Health Security will cost about $70 million.

South Sudan has a health system structured with three tiers: Primary Health Care Units PHCU, Primary Health Care Centers PHCC and Hospitals which exist as either state, county, police or military.

The plan is anticipated to maintain a strategic partnership using one-health: all hazards, government and whole of society approach.

“These risks are natural disasters [such as] flooding, which is happening now, insecurity, political archival [which] cause much trauma,” Dr. Machut stated, adding that they want to mitigate risks of “outbreak of infectious diseases that are imported from across the borders.”

South Sudan is currently battling the coronavirus pandemic, effects of flooding and polio.

The country is also prone to diseases -with meningitis, measles, yellow fever, and whooping cough endemic in many areas.

This is coupled with malaria, river blindness, sleeping sickness, and cholera.

“We need to start to develop activities and develop interventions that will help this country to really move on,” said Dr. Olushayo Olu, WHO Country Representative to South Sudan.

He described the new National Action Plan for Health Security as a deliberate step “to build a system that can comprehensively respond to outbreaks — not only COVID-19 but several other outbreaks.”