SYDNEY — Cape Breton University is continuing its pledge to help extend the lives of mothers and their children in South Sudan.

The Sydney university announced Monday that it has received a $1-million research grant to improve health care in what’s considered one of the poorest nations in the world.

As part of the project, university officials will support the training of community health workers in an effort to provide basic health care and education to people living in some the most remote regions of the country.

The $1-million research grant will be delivered through the federally funded International Development Research Centre, based in Ottawa.

“We’re thrilled with this recognition,” Kevin McKague, an assistant professor at the university’s Shannon School of Business, said Monday during an international call from India.

“We saw this as a kind of front-line intervention that was going to be important in this country in this particular context where you just have so little other resources.”

South Sudan continues to struggle with internal conflict despite it gaining independence from Sudan in July 2011 following decades of civil war.

With less than 200 doctors serving South Sudan’s 10 million people, the war-torn country has one of the worst child and maternal mortality rates in the world.

McKague said 55 per cent of South Sudanese residents do not live within walking distance of a health clinic.

The African nation can only invest $27 per person in health services compared with the sub-Saharan African average of $96 per person or the North American average of $6,000.

As a result, 13.5 per cent of children born in South Sudan do not survive to age five and its maternal mortality rate is 20 maternal deaths per 1,000 live births.

McKague said the South Sudan health worker incentives project aims to bring basic care into people’s homes, through more than 1,500 community health workers who will be trained in the basics of primary health care by project partner BRAC South Sudan.

McKague said previous research has indicated that non-financial incentives like awards and recognition are often a more powerful motivator than financial rewards such as a salary for community health workers.

University officials are now planning to study exactly what types of non-financial incentives are most effective in delivering the project.

They say their findings will be relevant to all developing countries that employ community health workers to improve mortality rates.

This is the second major federal grant announced for the project in recent years. Last spring, it received a $112,000 federal grant provided through Grand Challenges Canada.

As part of the project, officials say they will be working in partnership with a government representative of the South Sudan Ministry of Health.