The SPLM's health policy is built around one goal: quality care within reach of every family, in every boma, payam and county, not only in Juba. The SPLM Manifesto is direct about it: access to adequate nutrition, clean water and appropriate medical services are fundamental human rights, and protecting them is a primary responsibility of the State.
Since independence, new hospitals, primary health care centres and training institutes have opened across the country, and a new generation of South Sudanese doctors, nurses and midwives has qualified. SPLM's plan builds on that progress with a complete system: primary care close to where people live, trained staff to run it, medicines people can afford, and public-health basics such as safe water and disease prevention that stop illness before it starts.
A primary health care system from the Boma up
The SPLM is committed to building an efficient and effective nationwide Primary Healthcare System and Universal Health Care Service, from the Boma to the National levels. In practice that means a chain of care that a family can actually use: community health workers and midwives in the villages, primary health care units at the payam level, county hospitals able to handle referrals, and state and national hospitals for specialist treatment.
Each level strengthens the next: a well-staffed village clinic refers patients to an equipped county hospital, which in turn is backed by specialist care at state and national level. SPLM's priority is to make every link in that chain strong, staffed and supplied.
Our priorities
- Safe motherhood and child survivalPre-natal and post-natal care in every locality, skilled birth attendants and emergency obstetric care, so that every mother and newborn gets a safe, healthy start.
- Affordable medicinesReliable supply of essential drugs to rural facilities, and development of a domestic pharmaceutical industry producing generic medicines to bring costs down.
- A larger, better-trained workforceExpanding the training of doctors, clinical officers, nurses, midwives and community health workers, and rewarding them with fair pay and support.
- Defeating major diseasesSustained campaigns against malaria, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and waterborne disease, with vaccination, bed nets, testing and treatment reaching rural communities.
- Nutrition, water and sanitationClean water points, sanitation and nutrition programmes, because health begins in the household long before the clinic.
- Respect for indigenous knowledgePromoting, protecting and developing South Sudanese indigenous knowledge and know-how in healing, alongside modern medicine.
Mothers and children first
The Manifesto commits the Party to prioritise resources for pre-natal and post-natal care that will considerably reduce mother and child illness and death, by strengthening the capacity of medical facilities in the localities. It links health directly to family policy: day care centres and kindergartens to support working mothers, and laws that combat harmful practices such as forced and early marriage, which endanger the health and the future of girls.
A health system South Sudan owns
The SPLM's goal is a public health system that South Sudan owns and runs, staffed by South Sudanese professionals and financed by the nation. The Party welcomes partners who share that goal, training our staff, equipping our facilities and strengthening our supply chains as the national system grows.
In the SPLM Manifesto
“The SPLM shall ensure effective, accessible, and affordable health care system in the Republic of South Sudan… The SPLM is committed to establish an efficient and effective nationwide Primary Healthcare System and Universal Health care Service from the Boma to the National levels.”
Every mother cared for, every child protected, every community served. That is the health system the SPLM is building, from the Boma to the nation.