This video highlights how South Sudan built upon its influenza sentinel surveillance, developed in 2019 following the threat of the Ebola outbreak in neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, to scale up its response to COVID-19.

During the pandemic, South Sudan rapidly expanded its molecular testing capacities for COVID-19, by leveraging experience health teams familiar with the response to the Ebola virus disease and/or influenza sentinel surveillance. This made South Sudan one of the first countries in the African region to have capacity to test for SARS-CoV-2 virus. South Sudan also leveraged its influenza sentinel surveillance sites to successfully detect COVID-19 transmission in the community. In addition, South Sudan conducted an intra-action review to identify additional gaps for improvement, which prompted the country to procure additional Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) machines to meet testing demands, expand the number of testing sites at various levels and improve testing turnaround times.

Overall, the investment in molecular diagnostic infrastructure and workforce strengthened the country’s capacity to respond to COVID-19 and will continue to enable the effective detection, monitoring and control of other high-threat pathogens.

Photo credit: South Sudan Ministry of Health and WHO South Sudan Country Office.

YouTube link: https://youtu.be/12NmL1X8PJE