Over 100 health workers have been trained in the last three weeks with the aim to rapidly increase trained healthcare workers in response to COVID-19 outbreak in the country.

With support from World Health Organization (WHO) and other partners the Ministry of Health has trained health workers on COVID-19 case management and infection prevention and control (IPC). Participants are equipped with knowledge and skills on patient screening, isolation, contact tracing, use of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), and waste management.

These trainings are aimed to establish a surge capacity health workforce for COVID-19, provide adequate knowledge on infection prevention and control, and contribute to building a resilient human resource capacity for emergency response country-wide.

“The national case management strategy recommends that severe and critical cases are isolated in health facilities, said Dr Angok Gordon, the Incident Manager for COVID-19 at the Ministry of Health. “Hence it is pertinent for joint effort to fight COVID-19, the unseen enemy”.

South Sudan confirmed its first COVID-19 case on 5 April 2020 and has since recorded 231 cases and four deaths and four recoveries from COVID-19 reported to date.

“The training will build confidence for effective case management of COVID-19 patients”, said Dr Olushayo Olu, WHO Representative for South Sudan. “Continuous learning should be part of health care workers approach as much is yet to be known about the virus”.

As part of the technical support for the COVID-19 response activities at national, subnational and community levels, WHO in collaboration with Ministry of Health and other partners are conducting regular trainings targeting frontline health care workers on COVID-19 in the country.  

Since the start of the preparedness and response activity, WHO and partners have conducted eight online interactive training sessions on COVID-19, focusing on case management, IPC, contact tracing, rationale use of PPEs and waste management.

In addition, 119 health care workers were trained with hands on practical sessions at the Dr John Garang infectious diseases unit. The trained health workers will cascade the training to the states for effective COVID-19 case management.

The case management trainings are supported by WHO, Centers for Disease Control (CDC), UNICEF, ICAP, International Medical Corps and South Sudan Red Cross.