12 May2021
Health Care South Sudan

Our Chair raises cuts to UK aid with South West Global Health Network

Our Chair recently wrote to the Global Health Network across the South West about recent cuts to UK aid. This is what he said:
Like many kindred organisations across Wessex, Health Care South Sudan has recently felt the sharp end of cuts to UK aid funding. We had been working extremely hard with our in-country partners in South Sudan to put together a bid for funding via the Small Charities Challenge Fund (SCCF) at the Foreign Office (FCDO). This is no small undertaking for charities with very limited resources, but after a lot of development the bid was submitted in March. It was our first time applying and we learned a great deal in the process. It will come as no surprise that we were then devastated to hear that the FCDO had scrapped the SCCF in its entirety, rendering void every application from hundreds of small charities across the country. Not only this, but programmes such as the UK Partnership for Health Systems run by THET have been cancelled and it’s been reported that countries like South Sudan face aid cuts of up to 59% and more. We see the impacts of these cuts more and more each day.
I am privileged to be the chair of Trustees for Health Care South Sudan, a small charity established by Dr Alison Pinkerton in Salisbury which supports primary health care provision in South Sudan. Our work is aimed at helping some of the world’s most disadvantaged people, like so many other fantastic organisations across Wessex. The FCDO funding would have helped to support an innovative participatory water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) programme in Kupera, empowering 20,000 people to secure better health outcomes via a community-led WASH improvement programme. We will dust ourselves off and look for alternative funding sources. We could not, however, stay quiet while these cuts cause harm to people who do not have a voice. If you share these concerns, please join us in raising them with your MP and wherever you can to highlight the real world impact they have.

You can follow us on Twitter @healthcaresudan and visit our website for more: healthcaresouthsudan.org.uk.