A group of staff from Tralee’s Bon Secours Hospital are preparing to spend the aftermath of Christmas offering much needed healthcare in South Sudan.
The group, which will include three doctors and 12 nurses, as well as support staff, will set out for the conflict-stricken African country on December 27, and will remain there till January 5.
“One of the doctors went with a group from England about two years ago,” Margaret Cotter, a clinical nurse specialist in orthodaedics, told The Irish Catholic, explaining that it had been Dr Kamal Abdalla’s stories of his time in South Sudan that prompted hospital staff to organise their own expedition.
Team
“We’ll be based in Khartoum, with an outreach clinic,” Ms Cotter said, adding that they would work with other doctors there to form a team with seven doctors, including a cardiologist and an orthopaedic surgeon.
Community workers, she added, would go to local schools where they would give people folders assembled by schoolchildren in Kerry and ‘cool camp kids’ folders from Kelloggs.
Supporters of the project had raised about €80,000 for it, she said, explaining that the plan was to use this to buy ‘taxis’ – motorised bikes with rear seats – for 10 families, who could then use these to earn their own incomes.