Access to Primary Health Care for Iraqi IDPs, Returnees and Host communities living in Kirkuk, Ninewa and Anbar Governorates. The proposed project seeks to contribute to IHF health cluster allocation priorities to continue provision of an uninterrupted package of essential primary healthcare services in priority locations in Ninewa and Sulaymaniyah Governorates. 

This intervention will provide continuation of ongoing as well as newly establish life-saving assistance while ensuring access to essential and quality health care services for returnees amp IDPs’ families in a manner that is accountable, conflict-sensitive and supports the government's responsibility as the first responder. WV prioritizes the first-line response with front-line service delivery. This will ensure access to essential, life-saving medicines, consumables, and equipment for primary health care services for vulnerable populations. 

IHF will allow WV to respond to assessed, prioritized, unmet health needs or gaps in primary health care (PHC) service provision and to reduce morbidity and mortality of highly vulnerable populations, including returnees and IDPs. The proposed project will contribute to essential PHCC support in and out of camps per SPHERE standards, which will include: treatment of common illnesses communicable and non-communicable, provision of essential medicines and equipment, health promotion and education including COVID-19 awareness, DoH supported routine immunizations, reproductive health (RH) care, including antenatal care (ANC), postnatal care (PNC), family planning and referral for skilled delivery, counselling on treatment adherence, strengthening capacity of the DoH staff, as well as, the referral mechanism at the community and clinic level. All children under 5 will routinely be screened for malnutrition and referred as appropriate. Surveillance of outbreak diseases through national EWARN will be supported along with routine HIS reporting. Preventive and curative services, linking with the community health programming for health education and behavior change to reduce communicable diseases. Moreover, the proposed approach incorporates all the eight components of PHC to ensure access to comprehensive care. These are (a) health promotion, (b) nutrition, (c) WASH (hygiene promotion), (d) maternal and (e) child health, (f) immunization (through liaison with Department of Health (DoH/UNICEF)), (g) management of illnesses, and (h) provision of pharmaceuticals.

WV proposes to use IHF as co-funding to continue as well as expand the provision of support to PHCCs in the following targeted locations which are part of the health cluster’s areas of priorities 1. Ain al Hissan village in Sinjar/Ninewa Governorate, where WV has taken over the provision of PHC services after Medair  left the consortium and has withdrawn activities from Iraq. With the resumption of IDP camp closures by the government of Iraq (GoI) since mid-October 2020, the number of returnees in Ain al Hissan is expected to increase in the near future. Due to the DoH's limited financial and personnel resources to provide sufficient quality PHC services in Ain al Hissan, WV proposes to increase its health services in the PHCC there from 3 to 5 days.  2. Tazade IDP camp in Sulaymaniyah Governorate as a new location.  Following a recommendation from the Health Cluster, WV will expand its health services to provide a minimum package of comprehensive primary health care in the PHCC (5-days a week), as there is a huge gap in PHC service provision in the camp with no access to health services for IDPs since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in Iraq in March 2020, apart from transfers of patients to a hospital outside the camp in case of emergencies.