Lack of trained personnel thwarts Sudan’s plans to rebuild health services

Four years after a comprehensive peace agreement was signed, and despite a massive international drive to improve the situation, Southern Sudan still has the worst health statistics in the world. Fewer than one in four of the population has access to any medical facility.

A strategy to improve outreach was launched last month at Southern Sudan’s health assembly, which saw donors, international agencies, and service providers come together with the nascent Ministry of Health to try to redress the problems created by more than four decades of conflict in one of Africa’s most impoverished areas.

The assembly …