As South Sudan battled a major cholera outbreak, civil engineer and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) specialist Tai-Ring Teh was on the ground in Juba; working with the World Health Organisation (WHO) to trace the outbreak’s origins and bolster local recovery efforts.
A health emergency in the world’s youngest country
South Sudan is the world’s youngest country and also its poorest. With its GDP a mere US$455 per capita, South Sudan faces many challenges and relies heavily on international aid.
Finding the source of the infections
Tai-Ring and his colleagues at the WHO used their research to advocate to government to address the water source, including chlorinating the drinking water.
“That’s a big impact of my work,” he said.
Working with communities to stop the cholera from spreading
Tai-Ring and his colleagues worked closely with the community and the health facilities, explaining that the water was causing the cholera and suggesting they needed to chlorinate or boil the water.
“The bulk of my work was to, number one, find the source. And number two was to treat the source and stop the disease from spreading,” said Tai-Ring.
“There’s a significant improvement from where we started. It is now under control in Juba.”
However, there were challenges too.
“It’s not as straightforward as saying, ‘this is what we found and we need to do this’. It’s not that simple because education levels are very low,” he said.
Training, training, training
Tai-Ring is also a highly regarded RedR Australia trainer which was particularly useful as a huge part of this deployment included upskilling existing staff.
“There’s been a lot of capacity building. Hardly a week went by without me conducting a specific training on WASH, or infection prevention and control in a healthcare facility. That’s a lot of training,” he said.
Tai-Ring trained Ministry of Health and NGO staff on how to manage cholera treatment centres. This included healthcare waste, water management, toilet cleaning and personal protection equipment.
Tai-Ring also helped to secure more funding for the response, including funding for more staff to work on the response.
A depth of experience
With decades working as a water engineer and humanitarian WASH expert, Tai Ring is able bring all of that knowledge and experience to every new crisis he deploys into.
“Every emergency is unique, but they also have many similarities,” said Tai-Ring.
“South Sudan is definitely one of my more challenging deployments. The capacity on the ground wasn’t there compared to many other places, like Bangladesh or Philippines or Indonesia. South Sudan was very challenging, and I had to use a lot of my knowledge.”
However, with great challenges often come great rewards, and for Tai-Ring this rang true.
“This deployment was very rewarding. It was tiring, but it’s very rewarding when you have people telling you that they really appreciate what you’re doing.”
“Everybody wanted me to visit and help them out. And we definitely made an impact in terms of controlling the cholera outbreak. At the end of the deployment, the cases were going down.”
A human touch
Reflecting on his career, Tai-Ring appreciates the human connections that bring value and meaning to his work.
“It’s got a very good human touch, what I’m doing. That’s what keep me moving,” he said.
“In Indonesia, Myanmar, Philippines, Bangladesh or Rwanda, my skills are extremely valuable for water supply – like how to repair a water treatment plant, and how to rebuild or create a new water system. “
“And when safe water is available back in the community, you can see the community relax and that normality means the recovery will be ongoing. That’s a really good outcome.”
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