By Manas James Okony<\/p>\n
A severe drug shortage has hit Pigi County in Jonglei State amidst a rise in the cases of water-related diseases, local officials said. <\/strong><\/p>\n Dr. James Wien Thon, the county health director, said that they run out of life-saving drugs since April, leaving residents to fend for themselves.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a very low level of health system in the county compared to other counties. There is no county hospital. We only have one PHCC and 5 PHCU, compared to 6 and 13 respectively before the war,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n Dr. James said the package received was insufficient given the large population of returnees and IDPs.<\/p>\n He added that the last consignment of drugs received was two months, which didn\u2019t even take a month.<\/p>\n \u201cIt only contained antibiotics and paracetamols. So, as doctors we refer severe cases to Malakal (Upper Nile state) but means of transport is also a challenge,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n For his part, Pigi County Commissioner, Nyok Malual Mayik called for aid saying they are not able to respond to the rising health need of local populations.<\/p>\n \u201cHealth situation is dire throughout the county. We are not able to address this alone because the population is growing rapidly with returnees. There are no drugs,\u201d the commissioner said.<\/p>\n He noted that the only thing the county could afford but also costly is the evacuation of severely ill patients to Malakal by boats.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of people die on the way because of distance. So, we appeal to aid agencies to fill this gap,\u201d he lamented.<\/p>\n One resident, John Abiel said they sometimes rely on traditional medicines.<\/p>\n \u201cAs you heard, the health situation is not good. Doctors operate under tents but sometimes there are no even drugs,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Pigi is one of the nine (9) counties of Jonglei State. It is often cut off from the rest of the state by roads due to the floods.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Manas James Okony A severe drug shortage has hit Pigi County in Jonglei State amidst a rise in the cases of water-related diseases, local officials said. Dr. James Wien Thon, the county health director, said that they run out of life-saving drugs since April, leaving residents to fend for[Read More…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[116,79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jonglei-state","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15240"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15241,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15240\/revisions\/15241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}