South Sudan is one of the toughest places ARC works. But despite the challenges, our teams do amazing work in even the most remote areas. Working in 26 health facilities, including managing a couple of hospitals, our health teams save lives – responding to devastating cholera outbreaks and delivering thousands of healthy newborn babies each year.
But there’s one problem – electricity. Because of ongoing insecurity, there are constant fuel shortages. The generators that the teams rely on get shut off frequently, leaving the hospitals in total darkness.
“90% of South Sudan plunges into darkness at one time,” said Stanford Phirri, one of our nurses.
“Sometimes in the middle of an operation the generator goes out,” explained Dr. Joseph Okello, our surgeons. “We have to search for a flashlight or use the light on our phones in the operating theatre.”
We saw a simple solution for these incredible Changemakers – headlamps.
Our human resources team in South Sudan helped us identify the four field sites that are the most remote, and that have the most challenges with electricity. Then we set out to deliver headlamps into the hands (and on the heads!) of those that need it most.
“These are spot on and exactly what we need,” said Dr. Joseph.
“These headlamps will allow us to provide emergency services after hours from each hospital ward,” said Victor Dianga, a nurse anesthetist.
“It helps solve the electricity problem,” said Stanford. “Headlamps allow us to walk to the hospital at night in an emergency and also can be used to operate on patients. We can safely put IV lines in patients at night now.”
The headlamps were an easy solution, but they’re also a powerful one. Giving our health teams better light to see with at night is crucial to their work – and to saving lives.
