Essential Primary Healthcare services for vulnerable, conflict affected populations in Iraq According to the Iraq 2018 Humanitarian Response Plan Executive Summary, 8.3 million individuals are in need of humanitarian aid, with 1.5 million of these internally displaced persons (IDPs), 3.8 vulnerable host community members, and 2.1 million returnees. This project contributes to the IHF health cluster allocation priorities and will be complimented by Medair WASH and NFI projects, to deliver basic package of support for returnees at their home locations. This proposal is part of a larger Medair project designed to meet essential primary health care needs of 39,162 conflict affected in Ninewa and Kirkuk governorates. 

Medair proposes to use IHF as co-funding to provide support to 4 PHCCs Sinjar and Al-Buwayr in Ninewah Governorate and Khobaza and Hawiga city in Kirkuk governorate.  IHF will enable Medair to respond to assessed, prioritized, unmet health needs or gaps in primary health service provision and to reduce morbidity and mortality of highly vulnerable populations, including returnees and IDPs. 

This project will focus on PHCC support, re-establishing essential package of PHC services in non or partially functioning PHCCs in priority locations with significant health needs. This project is based on minimum 6 month programming appropriate to establishing and strengthening emergency health system delivery in the current context and achieving minimum quality benchmarks before transitioning support to the Department of Health (DoH). This project will enable Medair to increase comprehensive coverage of existing PHC services, such as in Sinjar PHCC, as well as to revitalize non-functioning facilities that have been damaged, where clinic staff are unavailable, insecurity continues to impact population movement and immediate provision of services is required. 

PHCC support will include: outpatient consultations, including for management of NCDs, provision of essential medicines and equipment, advocacy with DoH for vaccine provision to re-establish routine immunizations, reproductive health (RH) care, including antenatal care (ANC), postnatal care (PNC), family planning and referral for skilled delivery, BEmONC and CEmONC. All children under 5 will routinely be screened for malnutrition and referred as appropriate. Protection will be integrated throughout this project, from assessment of new locations to implementation health activities, and services provided for mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) and management or referral of SGBV with referrals for specialist services. Surveillance of outbreak diseases through national EWARN will be supported along with routine HIS reporting. Medair will provide preventive and curative services, linking with the community health program for health educations and behavior change as well as other sectors such as WASH for outbreak control.

This health program is part of Medair’s integrated multi-sector response project, which will be funded primarily by ECHO, with significant co-funding needs. IHF co-funding of this project will enable Medair to deliver quality comprehensive PHCC programing and service-provision to the most vulnerable, conflict affected communities in Ninewa and Kirkuk governorates, in line with IHF strategy.