Project report
South Sudan - Protection of Essential Health Services Project : Social Assessment (Vol. 2 of 2) : ICRC Social Assessment Report
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Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-sonnet-5-5This is a social assessment for a project that aims to increase the use and quality of essential health services in South Sudan, especially in the former states of Upper Nile and Jonglei. It lists possible negative impacts of the project, such as unequal access to services, poor hygiene and sanitation in health facilities, unprepared partners, fraud through ghost workers and facilities, expired drugs, and a shortage of qualified staff. It then lists measures to reduce these risks, including mapping health facilities, waste management plans, emergency training, physical verification, a supply chain assessment, community dialogue and lobbying for access to conflict areas. The excerpt does not focus specifically on children, though UNICEF is named as a partner.
Key points
- The project aims to increase the use and quality of an essential package of health services, with a focus on the former states of Upper Nile and Jonglei.
- Identified risks include unequal access, poor hygiene, water and sanitation in health facilities, and partners not equipped for emergencies or disease outbreaks.
- Other identified risks are ghost workers and facilities, expired or damaged drugs, and too few qualified staff.
- Mitigation includes mapping functional facilities, waste management plans for each facility, and training partners in emergency preparedness and disease surveillance.
- UNICEF will work with UNMISS and OCHA to lobby for access to conflict areas and to deliver life-saving drugs.
Limitations
Only the abstract is available, so it gives no data on child health outcomes or on whether the mitigation measures worked. It does not report any evaluation of an intervention.
Abstract
The development objective of Protection of Essential Health Services Project is to increase the utilization and quality of an essential package of health services in South Sudan, with a particular focus on the former states of Upper Nile and Jonglei. Some of the negative impacts include: (i) inequitable availability and access to service delivery in areas that are not highly vulnerable; (ii) poor hygiene, water and sanitation in health facilities negatively impacts safe delivery of health care services; (iii) Implementing partners (IPs) are not prepared nor equipped to respond to emergencies, including disease outbreaks; (iv) ghost workers and ghost health facilities included in the project fraudulently consuming budgetary resources through inflated staffing and facility costs; (v) expired and damaged drugs negatively affecting communities in the areas where the project is implemented; (vi) inequitable availability and access to service delivery in areas that are not highly vulnerable; and (vii) shortage of suitably qualified staff or presence of lowly skilled medical staff. Some of the mitigation measures include: (i) mapping of functional health facilities and selection of those to be supported, considering, local administrative boundaries, government and non-government (IO) controlled areas, population size, cultural characteristics of the population, and conflict dynamics; (ii) develop waste management plans for each health facility; (iii) train IPs in emergency preparedness and response, including infectious disease surveillance and response (IDSR); (iv) physical verification and mapping of health facilities by community mobilizers as well as an auditing firm; (v) conduct a diagnostic assessment to assess how the supply chain can be improved to ensure adequate delivery to health facilities located in Sudanese People’s Liberation Army in Opposition (SPLA-IO) areas as well as other hard-to-reach areas; (vi) strengthen community engagement and dialogue to reduce targeting of health institutions when conflict occurs; and (vii) United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) will continue to work closely with United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) and Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) to utilize their channels for lobbying for access in conflict areas to allow programmatic assessments and interventions, monitoring and vital distribution of life saving drugs by UNICEF and its partner’ access. (South Sudan)