20 May 2012 – With over 376 226 returnees reported across South Sudan, WHO has stepped up its support and response across all states.

This has involved prepositioning medical supplies and medicines in all 10 states, training health workers on communicable disease surveillance, response and case management, and ensuring the immunization of all returnee children.

In Juba alone, over 10 500 returnees are expected to arrive, and 1890 have already arrived by air and another 1971 by boat.

WHO response

To ensure that the returnee population has access to medical care during their journey, WHO has also been providing medicines and supplies to clinics at the way stations and transit sites.

WHO has supported the training of health care workers in case management at health facilities located at the returnee sites. WHO is also supporting surveillance for epidemic-prone diseases and the provision of water supply stands to sites that do not have them.

A mobile vaccination team has been supported to vaccinate children on arrival at the three sites at Juba port, way station and the national teachers training institute. Because of this, many children have been reached who have arrived from an area where death due to immunizable diseases is minimal.

Outbreak investigation kits have been prepositioned with state health authorities who are being supported by WHO to develop tools for health assessment, case definition, data collection and reporting. Investigations outbreak kits are used to collect samples of any suspected cases of diseases of public health concern from the immunization sites.

A health response plan and nutrition screening is being supported in collaboration with the South Sudan nutrition cluster.