Clinical officers play a key role in the health services of many African countries. They can perform 60-80% of doctors’ tasks but are faster and less expensive to train.
In Southern Sudan, there are less than 100 doctors to serve a population of approximately 10 million. However, AMREF has trained 130 clinical officers, who currently account for for more than half the total number of clinical officers in the whole region.
AMREF opened Sudan’s Maridi National Health Training Institute at the height of the civil war in 1998; the first group of students graduated in 2001.
The three-year course in public health care, nursing care and surgical procedure covers anatomy, orthopaedics, and pathology to pharmacology, psychology and psychiatry. It produces skilled and well-rounded medical professionals, able to diagnose and treat illness, perform surgery and educate communities.
As a result of the war, many of the students have been unable to complete secondary school. Consequently, the course now incorporates foundation courses in Maths, English and Biology.
Most of the students come from some of the remotest areas of Southern Sudan and are especially keen to put their new skills to use back in their communities.
Southern Sudan - Key Health Statistics
- Independence for Southern Sudan has come at a very high cost – 2.5 million lives: displacement and migration of 4 million people in two decades of civil war
- Southern Sudan has only 27% of the health workforce required to serve its population; many working in the health system lack key health care skills and knowledge
- Child mortality rate: 135 per 1,000 live births
- Maternal mortality rate: one in every 50 live births, one of the highest in the world
- There is only one doctor per 100,000 people.
- Only 10% of births are attended by skilled health staff
- Only 17% of children are fully immunised
- Preventable diseases – eg TB and diarrhoea – cause most deaths and illness
- 45% of under-fives suffer chronic diarrhoea –one of their biggest killers
The ‘Doctors’ of Southern Sudan
The impact of the shortage of doctors in sub-Saharan countries can be minimised by thinking outside conventional training to fill the gap.
One novel solution is task-shifting, which has successfully been implemented in Southern Sudan by redistributing duties normally performed by doctors to clinical officers. In a paper, published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organisation, Dr Peter Ngatia and Victoria Kimotho present a study that traces the progress of clinical officers who have graduated from the National Health Training Institute in Maridi.
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