The AGM for the St Mary’s Hospital, IoW – Juba Teaching Hospital Link (the Juba Link) will be held at 5.30pm on Monday 13th June 2011 in the Main Lecture Theatre, Education Centre. Everyone is very welcome to attend.
In October 2007, Juba Teaching Hospital (JTH) was twinned with St Mary’s Hospital on the Isle of Wight. The link was set up with the following general objective ‘To promote understanding of the needs and to support the Government of Southern Sudan, in order to improve clinical services through the development of education and training.’
Southern Sudan is one of the poorest parts of the world. The infrastructure of society has been devastated by decades of civil war. 25% of the population in Southern Sudan have access to any form of healthcare and inoculation rates for children are around 18%. Maternal mortality is the highest in the world at 2,037:100,000 (around 3%). Since women have an average of 6-7 births per woman, this means that approximately 20% of women die as a result of childbirth.
Although material for the provision of healthcare is limited, it is the absolute lack of healthcare staff that is the most crucial issue. There are needs for training in virtually all areas, particularly emergency obstetrics in primary care, midwifery, nursing, and medicine, integrating nutrition more fully into secondary healthcare. Unless development of ongoing education and training for them is supported, it is difficult to see how the health service in Southern Sudan can progress.
Plans are currently underway to build accommodation for staff to stay at whilst on attachment at Juba Teaching Hospital and the St Mary’s Juba Link is raising the money to do this.
You can find out more about the JUBA Link at http://www.iow.nhs.uk/uploads/juba/html/
