Juba, 28 July, 2020 / 10:16 pm (ACI Africa).
The Catholic Relief Services (CRS) in South Sudan has embarked on an initiative that will see undergraduate medical students provide home-based care for patients who exhibit flu-like symptoms in a bid to relieve strain on medical facilities in the East-Central African country.
The initiative is aimed at engaging learners who have remained redundant as schools remain closed as part of the measures to contain the spread of COVID-19 in the nine-year-old country, officials of CRS South Sudan have said in an interview with ACI Africa Tuesday, July 28.
Last week, on July 23, CRS secured partnerships with other humanitarian actors to scale up food production in urban areas and to provide vouchers for vulnerable groups who cannot produce food of their own.
During the July 28 interview, South Sudan CRS Country Representative, John O’Brien said that in addition to the monthly cash transfers by the Catholic charity organization, the cash program would support home-based care for flu-like symptoms through the deployment of undergraduate medical students as social workers.
Medical students will be drawn from four medical schools in Juba and their short training will be carried out by the Ministry of Health and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Mr. O’Brien said.
