COVID-19 Emergency number

The Ugandan Community in South Sudan has expressed concerns over the slow response by the coronavirus medical team.  

According to Namuwndo Joyce – the Ugandan Community secretary for Security, it took more than 24 hours for the coronavirus response team to relocate an alleged suspect from home to the testing center.

Joyce describes this as worrying, stressing that the team asked irrelevant questions on phone instead of rushing to the scene to see for themselves.

Speaking to Eye Radio on Wednesday, Joyce appealed to the ministry of health to improve its coordination efforts.

“6666, that is the number they gave but it’s not working, they are responding not immediately,” said Joyce.

“I tried the whole day calling, we went to the next day calling, imagine someone is being accommodated with another person, sharing and joining the community but when you call, they ask what is the location, what are the symptoms, what are the names, how long has been person being sick.”

“Some people called because they don’t have people they are supposed to coordinate and that is why they call 6666. It’s really a big problem.”

The results of the alleged suspect are yet to be released. But according to the Ministry of Health, South Sudan is still coronavirus-free.

Also, some people who claimed they have tested ‘6666’ and spoke to Eye Radio separately, have raised the same concern over the emergency number.

To find out whether the number work or not, Eye Radio’s editorial team tested the number by calling 6666 at exactly 9:48 am during the editorial meeting on Friday.

Indeed the call proved that the number was not working during that call.

Another test was made using another phone line at 9:50 am at the same editorial meeting, and again the call couldn’t go through.

However, in an exclusive interview with Eye Radio journalist, the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Health, Dr. Makur Matur Kariom who is also a member of High-Level Taskforce on CONVID-19, dismissed the allegation.

He told Eye Radio’s journalist that although there are some challenges, the emergency number is working.

Dr. Kariom tested the number by calling the emergency number during the interview and it works.

He attributed the challenge to limited numbers of phones with the coronavirus medical team.

“If it didn’t go through, it is possible that the difficulty that we face time with the networks are the issues. So when you called and it doesn’t go through, the possibilities are two; either the network is bad or all the lines are working or there are other calls are on,” Dr. Kariom said.

“A couple of days ago with the support of the MTN, we have managed to increased the number of lines, so that we don’t miss a call.”

“But of course, these lines are operated by human beings and human error is always there.  so when we also criticized others, we should also think that people can also have the error.”

“The most important thing is to acknowledge where the thing goes wrong and try to work and improved on them.”