WHO says health aid in Teso isn't working

The World Health Organisation (WHO) is conducting a two-week assessment of Uganda’s trouble-afflicted Teso region in the east, with a view to finding a sustainable, long-term solution to the health crisis there. WHO's Uganda country representative Dr Walker Oladapo said that medical aid to Teso had achieved little because the infrastructure for delivering health services could not cope with the crisis. “We’ve made three interventions so far and my assessment is that they didn’t benefit anybody,” Oladapo told IRIN. Teso is home to around 240,000 people who have been displaced by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) since the rebels first swept east in mid-June. These internally displaced people (IDPs) are living in mostly squalid conditions, with inadequate food or water and virtually no access to medical facilities. The congestion amongst Teso’s numerous camps for IDPs has made them ripe for infections and water-borne diseases. International aid has been slow in coming partly due to problems assessing the various needs. But Oladapo said that in the area of health, even where emergency aid has been provided, it has not worked. “The health system is degenerating and is simply not responding to the current population since the mass displacement of civilians in Teso,” he noted. He added that more health workers were needed in order to ensure that drugs being sent to Teso were properly managed so as to become effective in combating disease. “We need to organise the situation on the ground and get the population guarded against endemic diseases arising out of the congestion in IDP camps,” he said. Oladapo said a number of health problems were being caused by food shortages and psychological stress. He said rape cases and new cases of HIV in IDP camps were on the rise. WHO plans to focus aid on restructuring Teso’s entire health system to cope with the IDP crisis, leaving the region with a much better health service in the longer term.