Iraq: Iraq: Health Cluster Bulletin No. 5 - May 2019
The pilot phase of the Global Health Cluster National Partners’ survey was rolled out in Iraq in April 2019.
The aim of this survey was to gauge the capacity of national institutions to sustain service-provision on their own, thus facilitating the Grand Bargain and localization.
The initial version of the 4W MHPSS Online From was piloted in April, using Activity Info platform, in order to map the different services provided by partners on a district level in the target governorates.
The ToRs for the GBV Cluster focal person that were developed and endorsed by the Iraq GBV sub-cluster SAG were shared with the Inter-Cluster Coordination Group by OCHA on 2nd May. The role of focal points is to assist clusters to mainstream GBV prevention and risk mitigation throughout their programming (needs assessment, analysis, planning, implementation, and monitoring).
As part of the GBV in emergencies (GBViE) work, WHO HQ commissioned Johns Hopkins University to conduct a research in Iraq. The objectives of the research were:
1-To examine facilitators, barriers, and bottle necks to access and provision of quality care for GBV survivors in humanitarian settings.
2- To adapt “GBV Service Readiness Assess ment/Quality Assurance Tools” for health facilities in humanitarian settings.
3- To assess the quality of health services for GBV survivors using the newly adapted tools in two distinct humanitarian contexts, DRC and Iraq.
To facilitate this research mission, WHO Iraq’s and KRI MoH’s GBV focal persons accompanied the researchers on their visit to Rojawa Emergency hospital and Nafea Akry PHCC in Erbil governorate.
Given the changing context of the country and in order to stay in line with this context, both the Iraq Health Cluster and Strategic Advisory Group (SAG) ToRs were reviewed and endorsed on 5th May 2019 by the members of the SAG. This was as discussed during the SAG meeting held on 17th April, which was also attended by a WHO HQ Consultant on Accountability to Affected Population.
The Iraqi Information Center (IIC) UNOPS held a meeting with the Cluster and some partner organizations in Baghdad on 26th May. The meeting will be mainly focused on:
1- Iraqi Information Center (IIC)
2- Referral pathway
3- Standard and non-standard calls
4- Referrals and flagging of cases
5- Feedback mechanism
6- Key messages
The KIT Royal Tropical Institute WHO/Health Cluster commissioned paper on the Quality of Care survey conducted in the IDP camps supported by health partners in Iraq saw its final revisions in May. KIT had the final draft ready by 28th May and, in consultation with the Cluster Coordinator and Co-Lead, it was agreed that KIT would do the necessary process to get the paper published.
