Projects

Short Description:

Overall goal

Improved health status of Palestinian refugees in West Bank and Gaza.

Specifically, it aims to:

1. Improve pregnancy outcomes and maternal and child health services;

2. Ensure universal access to quality, person-centred comprehensive primary health care through the family health team approach;

3. Provide secondary and tertiary hospital care;

4. Provide effective leadership and direction for achieving strategic objectives.

Expected results

1. Strengthened People-centred primary health care services using Family Health Team model

2. Efficient hospital support services provided

3. Provision of effective leadership and direction for achieving strategic objectives

Target group / Beneficiaries

The Program will target the whole population of the Palestinian Refugees in West Bank and Gaza (2.8 million registered refugees). With the Austrian contribution, approximately 198,000 Palestinian Refugees in Gaza and the West Bank can be reached each year. ADA’s contribution constitutes 4.25 % of the budget of the UNRWA health programme for the West bank and Gaza. The target group includes men and women in reproductive age, infants, children and adolescents and patients with non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.

The program is implemented by UNRWA.

UNRWA has 65 health centres and sub-centres throughout the West Bank and Gaza in which they provide their medical services to Palestinian refugees (22 in Gaza Strip and 43 in the West Bank). Moreover, UNRWA contracted 12 hospitals in the West Bank and 10 in the Gaza Strip to provide surgical services including gynaecology and delivery operations to the Palestinian refugees.

Activities

This health programme contributes to the following activities in the West Bank and Gaza:

1. Maternal Health Care:

2. Child Health Care:

3. Communicable diseases

4. Non-Communicable diseases

5. Antibiotics prescription and medicines stock

6. Mental Health and Psycho Social Support

7. Adolescent and Adult Care

8. Hospitalization

9. Training course on Family Medicine for UNRWA medical physicians

ADA's funds will also contribute to an Agency-wide evaluation of the Family Health Team Approach with a special emphasis on Gender.

Context

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has been providing health care for Palestine refugees in the Near East for almost seven decades. Today, a rapidly growing population of over 5.6 million Palestine refugees is eligible for UNRWA services in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Under its Medium-Term Strategy, which presents the Agency’s strategic vision and objectives for its programmes and operations for the period 2016-2021, UNRWA is committed to its Strategic Outcome 2: Refugees health is protected, and the disease burden is reduced. Moreover, UNRWA’s effort to provide the best possible health care to Palestine refugees is part of the greater joint mission of the UN and national governments to address the disparities in social determinants of health and to achieve health equity and universal health coverage. UNRWA’s network of primary health care facilities and mobile clinics provides the foundation of its health assistance to refugees, offering preventive, basic and advanced medical care services tailored to each stage of life.

UNRWA Health Programme addresses SDG 3 “Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages”. Specifically, it contributes to the targets 3.1 reduction of maternal mortality; 3.2 ending preventable deaths of new-borns and children; 3.4 reduction of premature mortality from non-communicable diseases and promotion of mental health; 3.7 universal access to sexual and reproductive health-care services; and 3.8 achieving universal health coverage. In total, in 2022, the UNRWA Health Program amounts to USD 116,8 million for the Region and, within that, to USD 63.5 million for West Bank and Gaza.