Rebuilding After a Devastating Civil Conflict
CMMB has been working in the Republic of South Sudan, the world’s newest nation, since 2009. After years of devastating civil conflict, South Sudan’s social services and health infrastructure have been decimated. Compounding matters, conflict in countries bordering South Sudan has also spilled over into the country. CMMB is focused on the Western Equatoria region in the southwest corner of the country.
Program areas include:
- Assessment of health service delivery capacity
- CHAMPS
- Child protection and family reunification
- Domestic and international volunteers
- Gender-based violence prevention and survivor counseling
- HIV/AIDS prevention, care, and treatment
- Refugee health services
- Safe motherhood
CMMB’s CHAMPS serves Nzara, Yambio, and Ezo counties. The initiative focuses on safe motherhood, child protection, safe water and sanitation, and women’s empowerment. CMMB provides HIV/AIDS care and treatment, and community health workers conduct health information sessions, testing, and adherence counseling. The CMMB team provides training and mentorship to local healthcare workers and water committees and manages the supply and distribution of medications and water purification tablets.
Snapshots from South Sudan
South Sudan
Click on the pin icons on the map to discover CMMB's programs and initiatives in South Sudan.
The Power of Quality Healthcare in South Sudan
CMMB believes in a world free of HIV and AIDS.
ANISA (“together” in Zande) was launched in response to low awareness of HIV, lack of HIV counseling and testing, and poor infrastructure for HIV care and treatment. Services for prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) and education for traditional birth attendant care for HIV-positive women are critical to the health of mother and child. In 2019, more than 61,000 individuals received HIV services from CMMB South Sudan projects.
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CMMB believes that no mother’s life should end when her baby’s life begins.
Former volunteer obstetrician Rachael Consoli used to make women and children at the Ezo Primary Health Care Center laugh by trying to speak their language. She would ease their concerns with her clinical expertise and loving heart. The opportunity to see a trained doctor and surgeon, along with improvement to equipment and infrastructure, resulted in dramatically increased demand for maternal healthcare services. Subsequently, the Ezo center was vandalized during conflict, and CMMB installed an operating theater at the Nzara Primary Health Care Center.
Most recently, in 2020, to continue making strides against maternal mortality, CMMB opened a new maternity wing, with another operating theater, at St. Therese Nzara Hospital. A blood bank—the only one in Western Equatoria—was also part of this project. Both projects were in partnership with the Edmund Rice Foundation of Australia.
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CMMB believes that children should be protected from violence and exploitation.
Children associated with armed forces—“child soldiers”—are the youngest victims of South Sudan’s civil war. In 2015, when the Lord’s Resistance Army attacked villages in Western Equatoria, combatants not only looted and killed but also abducted children—more than 19,000—bringing them into the bush to fight or serve as wives, domestic slaves, foragers, and spies, living without clean water, proper nutrition, education, or family. Since the tentative peace accord, survivors have been returning home. Some are orphans; others have been maimed or raped. All tell harrowing stories of unspeakable violence witnessed or forced to perpetrate.
A key partner in Western Equatoria child protection, CMMB is actively involved in the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of these children, supported by UNICEF. In the program, children have the opportunity to share their stories with others who will understand and to tell what happened and how it changed them.
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CMMB South Sudan
Rahwa Building
Plot 710, 3K South, Airport Road
Kololo, Juba, Jubek State
211.927.393.607
CMMB - Healthier Lives Worldwide
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