Projects

Short Description:

Overall goal

The overall objective of the UNRWA Health Program in West Bank and Gaza is that the health of Palestine Refugees is protected and their disease burden is reduced.

Specifically, it aims to:

1. Ensure universal access to quality, person-centered comprehensive primary health care through the family health team (FHT) approach;

2. Protect and promote family health;

3. Prevent and control diseases;

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

Expected results

1. Continuation of UNRWA's people-centred primary health care system in the Palestinian Territories. Services provided include: Maternal and Child Health Services; Pharmaceutical Services; Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) Services.

2. Efficient hospital support services continue to be provided to Palestine refugees in the West Bank and Gaza.

3. Doctors and Senior Health Staff are trained and thus able to achieve agreed objectives.

Target group / Beneficiaries

With the Austrian contribution of 1.95 Million Euros, approximately 110,000 Palestine Refugees in Gaza and the West Bank can be reached. 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 centers and sub-centers 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 (10) to provide surgical services including gynecology and delivery operations to the Palestinian refugees.

Activities

- Procurement of medical and laboratory supplies;

- Integration of mental health and psychosocial support into the UNRWA family health team model;

- Providing maternal and child health care services;

- Ensuring efficient Hospital Services; improving the hospitalization rates and increasing immunization rates against vaccine-preventable childhood

illnesses.

- Providing Training to doctors and Senior Health care staff.

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 5.5 million Palestine refugees is eligible for UNRWA services in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Palestine refugees are especially vulnerable as they are a socially disadvantaged group whose lives have been conditioned for generations by social, political and economic forces well beyond their control.

Under its Medium Term Strategy (MTS), 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.

In total, in 2019, the UNRWA Health Program amounts to 120.4 million USD for the Region and, within that, to 59.6 million USD for West Bank and Gaza.