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South Sudan

South Sudan, Africa | Floods 2021 - Operational Strategy (16 to 31 October 2023)

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DESCRIPTION OF THE EVENT

South Sudan is experiencing severe flooding for the third consecutive year 2019 to 2021. By 7 October at least 623,000 people were affected since May, causing widespread damage to livelihoods, houses, schools, health facilities, and displacing thousands of families. Eight of the country’s 10 states are affected with Jonglei and Unity States the worst hit. Rains are expected to continue for the remainder of the year, with an anticipated increase in the number of people affected and needing humanitarian assistance. Many families have set up makeshift camps along highways and embankments where they are living in the open with minimum cover from the rain, heat, mosquitos, and limited access to food and drinking water.

About 80% of the population lives in rural areas and a large part is dependent on subsistence agriculture and humanitarian assistance. The consecutive floods, economic downturn, civil insecurity, and the effects of COVID19 have exacerbated an already fragile situation. It’s estimated that 7.2 million people or 60% of the total population were already food insecure (IPC 3-5 1 ) before the impact of the floods.

Pre floods poor access to health services with a limited number of health care workers, facilities, and supplies, poor roads and a lack of transport, and cultural beliefs produced some of the worst health indicators in the world.
Around 75 per cent of all child deaths are due to preventable diseases, such as diarrhoea, malaria and pneumonia.
South Sudan is one of the countries with the lowest rate of vaccination against COVID-19 in the world - just 1.3% of the population have had one dose and 0.3% both jabs.

In line with the role of the South Sudan Red Cross (SSRC) as an auxiliary to the Government, the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management requested SSRC through a letter on 17 September 2021 to assist in supporting the affected population citing the then-current high impact areas needing the support of Jonglei, Northern Bahr el Ghazal, Unity, Upper Nile and Warrap.