MSF France operate the main referral hospital in state capital Aweil and do so in conjunction with the Ministry of Health. MSF run maternity and paediatrics wards as well as some ICU and basic surgical operations units.
There are 20 to 25 international MSF staff on the team and some 340 national staff working for MSF. The Ministry of Health has four doctors and the Aweil hospital caters for a population of up to 1.4 million.
The maternity ward delivers on average 15 to 20 babies every day and also run a premature infants ward were they can only admit babies weighing 1.25kg or more given the limited facilities available to care for premature cases. MSF also run an in-patient Malaria ward at Aweil hospital and outreach community services for Malaria treatment across the region.
Northern Bahr el Ghazal saw catastrophic rates of Malaria this season; four times the rates of last year and far higher than the worst year in recent records (2012). Malaria accounted for around 75 percent of their hospital admissions in 2014.
The Aweil hospital has treated more than 20,000 Malaria patients since June 2014 with August, September and October the peak months for infection.