Iraq News Now

On 31 December 2019, WHO China Country Office was informed of cases of pneumonia of unknown cause detected in Wuhan City, Hubei Province of China. As of 31st January 2020, a total of 9,826 confirmed cases of Novel Coronavirus (2019 nCoV) were reported worldwide in 20 countries. As of now, there are no suspected or confirmed cases of 2019 nCoV in Iraq. WHO Iraq’s outbreak preparedness and response team is collaboratively working with the MoH teams, providing technical and logistical support on the screening, enhanced surveillance, detection, verification and response initiatives to prevent imported cases into the country.

For further details and updated Situation Reports, please visit the following link: https://bit.ly/2ViPvdI Toward the end of December 2019, the process of consolidation of Laylan 2 camp into Laylan 1 in Kirkuk governorate was complete. MSF, WVI and Jiyan are the health partners providing services in Laylan 1, dividing the services among themselves to avoid overlap.

Disbursement of the fund for the 3 health consortium projects (led by Cordaid, WVI and Dary NGOs) under the Iraq Humanitarian Fund 2nd Standard Allocation for 2019 was finalized in late December 2019. Implementation of activities started from the beginning of January 2020, covering the needs of under-served population in priority locations.

The government had initially nominated the Joint Coordination and Monitoring Center (JCMC) as focal point for issuing access letters to humanitarian partners, which was later changed to the Directorate of NGOs in the Prime Minister’s Office. However, to date, partners continue to face difficulty in obtaining these letters. The Humanitarian Coordinator (HC) and OCHA took up this issue with the government, both at local and Baghdad levels, in order to facilitate the delivery of uninterrupted services to affected population. The HC issued a pubic statement mentioning the access constraints and their effect on humanitarian assistance in Iraq.

In light of the protection concerns in Al-Karama camp, the level of humanitarian engagement was discussed at the HCT meeting on 16 December 2019. A document outlining the Common Framework of engagement by all clusters (in transit/screening sites, out of camp locations and in camps) was drafted and shared with the ICCG. This level of service-delivery is to be maintained in all locations faced with similar situations.

In addition, OCHA facilitated a Humanitarian Program Cycle (HPC) Lessons Learned Workshop on 28th January to jointly reflect on the common work during the development of the 2020 HNO and HRP, to identify strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement related to the Enhanced HPC Approach and the way it was rolled out in Iraq.

The outcome of the workshop is to feed into the global multi-partner review of the Enhanced HPC Approach, which will inform any modifications that might be made ahead of the 2021 cycle.

The Joint IMWG-AWG Meeting/Technical Evaluation of 2020 HNO took place on 19th January 2020, facilitated by OCHA and attended by Cluster Coordinators, Co-Leads and IM officers. A review of the timeline and process (conducting the MCNA, calculation of PiN, development of indicators, etc.) using the new HNO template was done and experiences of clusters were documented.

The mission to Al-Karama camp, aiming to assess conditions in relation to the sponsorship system, freedom of movement and civil documentation, that had been postponed several times during December due to lack of access letters, materialized on 26 January 2020. The national inter-cluster team consisted of CCCM, Child Protection, Food Security, Health, Protection, and Shelter/NFI cluster representatives along with OCHA. The draft report and recommendations of this mission is to be shared with the ICCG for endorsement by the first week of February.

Due to funding constraints, Emergency NGO was scheduled to phase out of Ashty camp, Sulaymaniyah governorate, by 31st January 2020. WHO, which was the funding agency for this activity, has identified another partner (Heevie), with lower cost to maintain services in the camp starting in early February.

The final list of indicators to monitor the activities under HRP 2020 were shared with the Cluster partners during January. The HRP 2020 reporting platform (Activity Info) is being built by all clusters/OCHA and reporting is scheduled to start after mid-February, where partners would have to retroactively report for January.

The outbreak of seasonal influenza created a panic among the public and the health care workers. A total of 1,223 Severe Acute Respiratory Illness (SARI) cases were reported by the National Surveillance system in 2019. Out of the 582 cases that were reported between 21st October and 23rd December, 250 were positive for Influenza A (H1N1). Timely alerts were issued and specimen transport media were distributed by WHO. There was adequate stock of anti-viral medication in hospitals.

The conclusion of the high-level consultation meeting in September 2019 was that Iraq is one of the regional priority countries to implement the Polio Transition plan, the objectives of which are:

• Sustaining a polio-free world after eradication of polio virus - Strengthening immunization systems, including surveillance for vaccine-preventable diseases, in order to achieve the goals of WHO’s Global Vaccine Action Plan - Strengthening emergency preparedness, detection and response capacity in countries in order to fully implement the Internation al Health Regulations (2005)
  

In this regard, WHO organized a high consultative meeting in Erbil between 15 – 19 December 2019, with active participation of MoH and UNICEF on Polio Transition and development of the Transition plan. As per the timeline, the first draft of the document is to be ready by the end of the first quarter of 2020.

The Joint IMWG-AWG Meeting/Technical Evaluation of 2020 HNO took place on 19th January 2020, facilitated by OCHA and attended by Cluster Coordinators, Co-Leads and IM officers. A review of the timeline and process (conducting the MCNA, calculation of PiN, development of indicators, etc.) using the new HNO template was done and experiences of clusters were documented

In addition, OCHA facilitated a Humanitarian Program Cycle (HPC) Lessons Learned Workshop on 28th January to jointly reflect on the common work during the development of the 2020 HNO and HRP, to identify strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement related to the Enhanced HPC Approach and the way it was rolled out in Iraq. The outcome of the workshop is to feed into the global multi-partner review of the Enhanced HPC Approach, which will inform any modifications that might be made ahead of the 2021 cycle.

The Global Health Cluster shared the final report of the internal health cluster/sector monitoring report for the last quarter of 2019 with the country clusters, which is a tool used by cluster coordinators, co-coordinators and other cluster secretariat for self-monitoring of the cluster outputs and to improve coordination of health responses for better outcomes.