Staying healthy takes on new meaning

Staying healthy in South Sudan is an adventure everyday.  Malaria is commonplace and the prophylactics seem to do little in preventing it.  I try to be careful sleeping under a mosquito net, wearing deet (who cares if it will give me 3 heads in 20 years), taking the pills, but I still somehow get bug bites.  The strain of malaria is cerebral malaria, meaning it affects the mental state and the mortality rate is somewhere between 25% and 50%. 

Typhoid is rampant – turns out the vaccine isn't effective.  In an effort to prevent it I don't eat uncooked foods i.e. fresh vegetables (which anyone who knows me realizes that is quite a challenge for me) unless I have pealed or washed them myself, however typhoid can be transmitted by flies, so it’s only a matter of time.  Everyone I know has had it.

It is the only place in the world where Guinea Worm still exists (a parasite from the 2nd century) that grows under you skin, creating a painful bump and eventually the worm breaks out!!  Google pictures if you are not faint of heart. 

Outbreaks of Cholera aren't abnormal. 

And as rainy season is dying down and I began to feel relaxed about mosquitoes and malaria, although I learned that with dry season comes the Nairobi Fly.  Its a bug and it lands on you - you're automatic reaction is to swat it, however the blood turns out to be like battery acid and instead it leaves an acid burn on your skin. 

Not only are there all these risks, but getting healthcare is hard.  South Sudan has the highest rate of maternal mortality in the world and a woman has a higher chance of dying in childbirth than graduating from high school.  Children have a 1 in 5 chance of dying before they reach 5; only about 25% of people can even access basic healthcare.  One of my coworkers, who lives outside of Juba, died in childbirth because there wasn’t a gynecologist.  And even when you can get access, due to the years of sanctions against Sudan (north and South) they can’t get quality medications, many come from China with no guarantee for the supply chain and often are ineffective.

I realize you all are probably worried, but don’t be.  I take my vitamins, eat my bananas and pineapples, cook my veggies, get lots of sleep and try and be as careful as I can.  I’m writing this just to give an idea of the challenges that the country faces and they almost seem easy to address in comparison to the challenges of having to set-up an entire government, its institutions, a legal system, an economy, a police force, a system of education for illiterate population.  My boss said that South Sudan is the largest statebuilding challenge of our generation.  But at the same time, I have hope - with all the attention, international agencies, NGOs, donors, and finally a free people there is the potential to overcome these challenges.