Idlib Health Directorate hosted an expanded meeting that included all humanitarian organizations concerned with the health sector, to discuss the risks threatening the health sector in the northwestern region of Syria due to the shortage of international funding, in addition to exchanging views and coming up with a set of recommendations that would mitigate the catastrophic effects resulting from that. At the beginning of the meeting, Dr. Zuhair Al-Karrat, Idlib Health Director, gave a brief presentation of the map of medical services in the region and presented some statistics issued by United Nations agencies regarding the medical situation in NW Syria, where he stated that the population of the region exceeds 5 million people, including 3.5 million displaced people, half of whom live in camps. He stated that until the end of last April, 77 medical facilities were operating without support, including 17 gynecological and children’s hospitals. At the end of next June, this number will rise to 112 facilities serving about 1.5 million people, stressing that the decrease in support for the health sector is accompanied by a population increase of high proportions, which poses a major challenge to the service sectors in the region, especially the health sector, adding that the cessation of children’s hospitals, vaccine centers, tuberculosis, and dialysis centers threatens to increase the spread of diseases and increase mortality rates, especially among children. Then a group of topics were presented for discussion, including the decline in international support provided to the health sector in the region, the danger of withdrawing the health sector financing file in the region to the Assad regime, the distribution of the health services map, reducing the number of facilities by merging their services, the necessity of sharing facilities' data with the directorate and with the DHIS2 system which belongs to the HIS Information Unit.

After deliberations and discussions that lasted for more than two hours, the attendees came up with a set of recommendations, the most prominent of which are: Integrating health services within one region and developing a new services map according to need and population, reducing operational costs by applying a set of procedures, making some non-ambulatory medical services at nominal fees (charitable services), the necessity of searching for new donors and new projects, conducting a re-evaluation of the need for medical staff. Automating health services and activating the unified health system between facilities to reduce waste in expenses and staff as a result of a patient visiting more than one facility. The need to communicate with donors to direct grants according to need.

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