SARC’s integrated response to save lives and minimise the overall impacts of COVID-19 related morbidity and mortality through the provision of timely health and WASH services to the most vulnerable communities in Syria. SARC has developed a COVID Response Plan and has already started specific COVID-19 preparedness work, in particular with a mass sterilization campaign of the streets and public areas of Damascus, Al-Hassakeh, Aleppo, Homs, Deir-Ez-Zour and Daraa as well as a mass awareness raising campaigns using existing bill boards and community-based first aid (CBHFA) programme. The SARC COVID response plan focuses on preparedness, containment, mitigation and early recovery using SARC’s existing programmes that have been implemented throughout the Syrian conflict such as providing medical and food assistance to those most in need.
Under the plan SARC has put in place measures to ensure the continuity of essential health care and WASH services targeting the most vulnerable populations including communities affected by the COVID-19 pandemic as part of the SARC business continuity plan. The plan prioritizes increased protection of SARC volunteers who put their health and lives at risk in the course of delivering services to affected people.
The proposed response is to reduce community transmission, morbidity and mortality associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and increase human dignity to affected communities in Syria through an integrated and gender-responsive approach focusing on health, WASH and psychosocial support and building on the already established SARC partnerships between SARC and RCRC Movement Partners, UN agencies and the international non-governmental organizations. The response is very much in line with the priorities identified in SARC’s COVID Response Plan and the technical clusters in Syria, the strategic priorities of SARC and global COVID response strategies. For this project SARC will target communities who are most vulnerable to COVID infection and first responders particularly in those governorates where the MoH has identified positive cases and those communities in IDPs camps and collective shelters in Aleppo, Al-Hasakah, Hama, Homs, Deraa, Damascus and Rural Damascus. 
Specifically, and to ensure a rapid, efficient, and coordinated response by the SARC health teams, key activities in the proposed action will focus on the following:
 Provision and distribution of personal protective equipment (PPE) to SARC volunteers and staff providing services in SARC health facilities comprising of Primary Health Clinics (PHC), Mobile Health Units (MHU), Emergency Health Points (EHP), Mobile Medical Teams (MMT), First Aid Centers and Ambulance Services.
 Community hygiene promotion activities as part of a broader risk communication and community engagement strategy.
 Provision of hygiene kits to affected populations in all the seven targeted governorates of Syria.
The above will be complemented by SARC’s ongoing activities including training of SARC health and WASH volunteers and staff on epidemic control to ensure they are better prepared to respond to health in emergencies and epidemic control.
Through these activities the project aims to achieve the following:
 Increase the capacity of 1,950 SARC health volunteers and staff to provide high quality preventative and promotive health services in SARC health facilities 
 Enhance the capacity of SARC’s 126 health facilities comprising of emergency health points (EHPs), clinics, mobile health units (MHUs), medical teams (MMTs), first aid centers and ambulances to deliver and track health services with a focus on COVID-19
 Increase the practice of hand-hygiene and hand washing among vulnerable communities targeting 222,500 beneficiaries
Increase access to hygiene kits targeting 37,500 beneficiaries