Video transcript: Emergency team
Public Health Promoter Joyce Poggo talks to Jane Beesley about Oxfam's emergency work in southern Sudan. (April 2009)
My name is Joyce Poggo, I’m leading the Emergency Preparedness and Response team for southern Sudan. Currently we are in Wudir, there are many activities taking place here, but unfortunately we have to leave for Wudir for Rumbek to prepare for an intervention in Wulo where inter-tribal clashes happened, and then move onto Mumvolo where there’s incidences of diarrhoea and again, there’s another inter-clan clashes that happened in Acobo and we also have to attend to that.
Jane Beesley: How would you normally get to an emergency?
Definitely, some areas we have to fly, like now, we have to fly out from this location to Rumbek. And in other areas we’ll have to drive, but on very rough roads.
JB: And what will be the first thing that you do when you get there?
We will do a rapid assessment and find out the immediate needs. Then we’ll get in the items that are needed for the response.
JB: And what do you think will be the main challenge?
Definitely one of the issues is transport – communications, and especially the road network, is not very good in southern Sudan. There are a lot of potholes and very old roads. No grading has been done. In some areas there are no roads, we just put the vehicle, face the direction and drive.
JB: And what work will you and your team be doing?
Definitely we’ll be doing hygiene promotion, and if there will be some water points that have broken down, or if we test and find that they are highly contaminated, then we’ll do contamination and treatment of the water. Then we’ll also train hygiene promoters. Again, we’ll be doing distributions of non-food items such as buckets and cups and mosquito nets.
