# The Doctor on a Mission to Build a Healthier South Sudan | Yohanis Riek | TED ## Метаданные - **Канал:** TED - **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UGkIOGkbKU - **Дата:** 27.03.2026 - **Длительность:** 6:45 - **Просмотры:** 3,364 ## Описание Yohanis Riek went from herding cattle and fighting as a child soldier to becoming the first doctor in his community in South Sudan. He shares his journey to found a nonprofit bringing health care to remote communities — empowering locals to take charge of their own health, as the world's newest country finds its place in the world. (Recorded at TED Fellows on [July 7, 2025 Join us in person at a TED conference: https://tedtalks.social/events Become a TED Member to support our mission: https://ted.com/membership Subscribe to a TED newsletter: https://ted.com/newsletters Follow TED! 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For more information on using TED for commercial purposes (e.g. employee learning, in a film or online course), please submit a Media Request at https://media-requests.ted.com #TED #TEDTalks #Health ## Содержание ### [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UGkIOGkbKU) Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00) I'm Johannes. I'm a doctor and a social entrepreneur based and working in South Sudan. When I was growing up in my village, my future was to be a Catholic keeper. Through being someone mobile, the nomadic culture, we became adaptive to other new culture that we learn as we migrate. And that experience enabled me to connect with a lot of other people. And so future keep changing based on the new life I was experiencing the future was you know to be someone successful someone who can be able to back community but when I was around 14 or 15 years I don't know exact age but by estimation at that time I was conscripted into the army forcefully and that's how I become a shall sodian the course of that civil war was being felt by everybody so the regional neighbors decided to bring the two waring parties together for a negotiation which led to the peace agreement in 2005 and that was supported by the United Stateate government and I was sponsored by the government to go to schools. When the negotiation is started the first thing first was to demobilize child soldiers from the army and the immediate activities to do after the demobilization were go to school. The first immediate motivation for me to become a doctor was seeing my family members die because of disease that could be treated. My dad particularly my sister which was young at the time you know motivated me when I learn about the school to study something that can help fight the disease burden in my community. I was the first to go to school in my family and also the first to become a doctor and not only my immediate family but in my community. 2009 was my first year at university and that's when I also started my nonprofit organization called Yoker South Sudan. Yokare South Sudan is a nonprofit healthc care organization that is focused on infectious disease control and management as well as the primary care part of the health system through static health facilities and also through mobile medical team that go to communities that are far away from our health facilities where the gap are huge and people continue to die every day. For the last 17 years we have many successes. We are proud that we have saved life. When we vaccinate children, children are able to go to school and they are able to become an important member of the society. There are children that have gone to school. Now if we did not do that vaccination, maybe they would have died from those childhood diseases that are preventable. We understand that as an organization we cannot be able to do everything by ourself. So we help community organize themsel. The people who come to our health facilities we train them. Many patient that we have served became service providers themselves. One of our patient called Lilian later on became a peer navigator. Now he's able to identify people who are also suffering and preparing them to the health centers for them to come for testing and also to come to get their medication as well as delivering the training delivering medical services to the people who cannot access medical facilities. People must be able to take charge of their own health. Actually our name at EOare mean the care we provide is yours. Wherever we work we organize the community. We train them so they can take charge of the future. EO focus on long-term health solution because we understand that health is not just an immediate need it's a long-term need and because of that some of the solution will provide are being funded by external donors such as US head or US government and when the current US government came into power we got an abrupt notification tomorrow we suspend all activities so that had the immediate effect on us The first immediate effect was on the patient. Before this happened, we have more than 60,000 people that were relying on our medical services. As of now, we are supporting 32,000. Thousands of communities are not able to access basic healthcare services. And also from having eight health facilities that we were directly supporting to only two facilities right now that we are supporting our main power reduced from 53 to only eight essentially staff now when that suddenly cut they has where do we go patient are also asking us where do we go why did you cut this didn't allow us time to prefer to close ### [5:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UGkIOGkbKU&t=300s) Segment 2 (05:00 - 06:00) it to look for other financing alternative that threaten the very existent of the organization. The most important thing to invest in is the people. There is no country without people in the first place. We are the youngest nation in the world right now. In 2011, South Sudan became an independent country. Given that it's not part of that global community yet in term of technology, in term of media, in term of other connectedness, you know, we feel neglected. We have outgoing conflict. We have a natural climate issues. Our voices are not being heard. My hope for the future first as a doctor is a healthy society and that is what we are working for because when the community is stable when the society is stable we will contribute meaningfully to the world and people will know us for positive thing instead of being known for conflict and suffering. Having a new country is just like when you have a new home you just bought your new house. You are very excited. You are very happy. You finally have something you can call home. And that is the experience that we have as a nation. Even if we are in crisis, protracted crisis, persistent crisis, we are very happy that personally I'm very proud that I have a country. Cuz I believe one day through the contribution I'm making or through the contribution of others, we will be better despite the challenges we are currently facing. --- *Источник: https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/20581*