During this reporting period RMF:
RMF actively supported World Breastfeeding Week. During this event, lactating mothers were taught best breastfeeding practices and cooking demonstrations were conducted for lactating mothers.
Health facility utilization is progressing. From July to September 2017, RMF carried out 62,837 medical consultations, treating 55,552 refugees and 7,285 nationals. 2,518 people (2,158 refugees and 360 nationals) were admitted to the inpatient departments at RMF medical facilities with different conditions.
RMF participated in a mass polio campaign titled “Uganda Supplementary Immunization Activities,” during which 29,278 children were immunized against polio in zones 1, 3, and 4 of Bidibidi Refugee Settlement. This includes 29,220 children under 5 years of age and 58 above 5 years of age.
Since 2009, RMF has been working to help the people of South Sudan recover from decades of civil war, which destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure and healthcare system. RMF initiated, co-founded, and continues to support the Juba College of Nursing and Midwifery, supports the Juba Teaching Hospital, and in December 2014, became the UNICEF implementing partner for malnutrition treatment and prevention in Jonglei State and the greater Pibor Administrative Area. Even after renewed fighting broke out in July 2016, RMF’s in-country teams have continued these programs. RMF has also been providing health services, school support for children, and vocational training to South Sudanese refugees in Uganda’s Kiryandongo Refugee Settlement since 2008, and was appointed UNHCR Health Implementing Partner in 2014.
To accommodate the large numbers of South Sudanese refugees fleeing to Uganda (between July 1, 2016 and September 21, 2016, there were 163,540 new arrivals), the Ugandan Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) and the UNHCR, in partnership with RMF and other organizations, opened the new Bidibidi Refugee Settlement on August 5, 2016. Bidibidi is located near the South Sudanese border in the Yumbe district of West Nile, Uganda, and has the capacity to support 180,000 refugees. Bidibidi is being built from the ground up, and during August 2016, 31,902 refugees were relocated to the settlement. Real Medicine Foundation is the main UNHCR Health Implementing Partner for Bidibidi Refugee Settlement, and between August 5, 2016 and August 31, 2016, 5,331 patients were treated at RMF’s health clinic.
About 350,000 refugees from South Sudan and over 60,000 people in the host community were served this reporting period.
Yokani Hakim is a 10-year-old boy who weighed 8.4 kg when he arrived on September 10, 2017 from Goboro border point (an entry point for refugees from South Sudan). RMF’s medical team identified Yokani and saw that his condition was concerning. After assessment, he was referred to the main nutrition point in Bidibidi Refugee Settlement: Bidibidi Reception Health Centre III.
RMF’s nutrition team, headed by Nutrition Officer Ronald Byandala, found on examination that Yokani was suffering from malaria, and his condition included lack of appetite, edema grade 3, limbs unable to flex, general pallor of the skin, and sparse, silky depigmented hair. He was diagnosed with SAM (severe acute malnutrition) and edema (marasmus and kwashiorkor) with < -3SD of the Z-score.
According to his mother, Ajone Sarah, Yokani was always left in the house because he could not walk, and at 10 years old, he could not even talk. Yokani was admitted for inpatient therapeutic care (ITC) and started on antimalarial treatment. He was also started on Formula 75 (F-75) during the stabilization phase. After 2 days, his treatment was changed to Formula 100 (F-100). Aside from nutritional therapy, the team also had to provide ambulation of the limbs to enable Yokani to walk.
Within 4 days, the edema had subsided, and Yokani’s appetite had returned. He was also able to sit, as well as play with fellow children in the ward. Real Medicine Foundation was able to control the most serious illness. On discharge, Yokani weighed 8.7 kg. We enrolled him in outpatient therapeutic care, and he was transferred to Imvepi Refugee Settlement in Arua District under Medical Teams International for further management of acute malnutrition. The team allowed Yokani to travel to Imvepi because that is where his parents had been given a plot of land to settle.