(IRIN News) – In the absence of a functioning state, outside NGOs are left to provide healthcare – even primary healthcare – to most of South Sudan. Yet those organisations continue to face major obstacles to doing their work: saving lives in a country beset by civil war is impossible without access to the wounded and the sick. Between January 2016 and December 2017, there were at least 50 attacks on medical facilities and personnel in South Sudan, and 750 denials of humanitarian access, according to a new report published on 23 April by the Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict. Those attacks included “arson and looting; occupation of medical facilities; and threatening, intimidating, detaining, abducting or killing medical personnel,” the report states.
For medical workers in South Sudan’s war, just reaching the sick is a challenge
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Watchlist is a fiscally sponsored project of United Charitable, a US-based 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization.
