Decline in International Funding for the Health Sector in the NW Region of Syria

Fears are increasing of the major humanitarian catastrophe that will befall the northwestern region of Syria as a result of the continued reduction in international funding for the health sector, as all international grants funding for the health sector in the region have decreased by rates ranging between 30-60 percent, in light of the increasing population percentage and increasing pressure on health facilities in the region. The cessation of support for hospitals, especially women's and children's hospitals, and the cessation of the vaccine program, dialysis centers, blood banks, thalassemia centers, medical waste incinerators, and physical therapy centers will have terrible health effects on the people of the region, in terms of an unprecedented increase in the rate of spread of epidemics and diseases, and a rise in deaths, especially among Children, women and the elderly. The number of health facilities for which support will stop until the end of this month of June is 112 facilities serving about 1.5 million people, and by the end of the year this number will rise to 136 facilities, including 42 centers providing reproductive health services. These facilities serve 5 million people living in this region includes 3.5 million displaced people, 2 million of whom live in camps near the border with Turkey, and who were forced to leave their towns and villages to flee with their lives and the lives of their children from the oppression of the regime forces. In Idlib Governorate, the number of hospitals that have stopped to receive support and are operating on a voluntary basis until the end of the current month of June, reached 14 hospitals, including 8 women’s and children’s hospitals, in addition to 22 primary health care centers (this number will increase to 95 centers by the end of the year), and 6 physical therapy centers serving 1,700 beneficiaries, in addition to 4 thalassemia centers serving 700 patients, and the exit of these facilities from service will increase the pressure on other facilities that are still supported, and thus it will cause the inability to serve this increasing number of patients. The cessation of the routine vaccination program will deprive hundreds of thousands of children in the region of the necessary life-saving vaccines, especially the polio, meningitis, tuberculosis, measles, hepatitis C and other vital vaccines. Vaccination centers with the Covid vaccine will also stop, threatening the resurgence and expansion of these diseases in the region and neighboring countries. Idlib Health Directorate, with all its medical staff, call on the international community and international donors to assume their responsibilities towards more than 5 million civilians living in this region, and to work to not deprive them of free life-saving medical services, in light of a humanitarian tragedy that has been going on for 13 years, and the absence of a real international will to end This humanitarian catastrophe against civilians in the northwestern regionof Syria.

#Urgent_Support_for_Northern_Syrian_Hospitals