Iraq: UN agency ramps up emergency medical care to women and girls affected by conflict

10 April 2017 – The United Nations population agency, with financial support from the European Union (EU), has increased its humanitarian response in Iraq to meet the urgent needs of women and girls as fighting peaks in the war-torn country.

Thanks to an additional five million euros contribution by the European Commission Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO), the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) is able to up-scale its urgent frontline assistance.

“Through this EU partnership, UNFPA will provide much needed reproductive health services to more than 700,000 conflict-affected women and girls in Iraq. Furthermore, over 120,000 newly displaced women and girls from Mosul will receive first line relief items, as part of the Rapid Response Mechanism Consortium, which also includes UNICEF [UN Children’s Fund] and the World Food Programme (WFP),” said the UNFPA representative in Iraq, Ramanathan Balakrishnam, in a press statement.

The provisions include lifesaving reproductive health services in the recently re-taken areas of East and West Mosul as well as the delivery of first assistance kits to displaced women and girls from Mosul and other active conflict areas in Iraq.

According to UNFPA, the EU’s generous support will contribute to establishing and running of three field maternity hospitals that will offer safe delivery options and lifesaving obstetric emergency services to conflict-affected women from West Mosul.

“Bringing back essential health services in conflict-affected areas in Mosul is a priority for the EU,” said Javier Rio-Navarro, ECHO head of office in Iraq.

The EU contribution also supports the procurement and running of two mobile delivery units and two mobile reproductive health clinics in retaken districts and neighbourhoods in East and West Mosul, as well as similar services in Anbar, Kirkuk and Salah al-Din governorates.

“Pregnant women and displaced women and girls who have survived the hardship of conflict will receive much needed emergency medical services,” he added.

UNFPA delivers a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every child birth is safe and every young person’s potential is fulfilled.