More funding is urgently required for humanitarian organizations to help people in desperate need in Syria, said Kyung-wha Kang, the United Nations Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator, to the UN Security Council.
“Needs continue to outpace response,” said Kyung-wha Kang, as she delivered the briefing on behalf of Valerie Amos, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs. “The relentless violence and destruction in Syria has led to one of the worst displacements of people the world has seen in decades.”
Ms. Kang said the Syria response is now contained in a single plan and appeal, inclusive of assistance both from within the country and through cross-border operations, adding that the response to people inside Syria will require $2.9 billion this year to assist the 7.6 million people displaced within the country, and the 3.8 million refugees.
“Last year, we received 48 per cent of the amount requested,” she said. “Lack of funding, for example, for the winterization programme, means that hundreds of thousands among the 3.3 million people targeted for assistance have not received assistance, during this particularly harsh winter.”
Despite the lack of resources and the extremely difficult and unsafe operating environment inside Syria, humanitarian organizations continued to help with, among others, distributing food to over 3.6 million people, water and sanitation interventions to 1.5 million, medical assistance to over 680,000 and emergency non-food items to over 500,000.
She said UN’s cross-border deliveries from Turkey and Jordan into Syria totalled 59 under Security Council resolutions 2165 (2014) and 2191(2014), providing food assistance to over 702,000 people, non-food items for over 615,000, water and sanitation supplies for 311,000, and medical supplies for over 468,000 people. The World Food Programme (WFP) had reached 315,000 people in rural areas and Aleppo city in December, planning to reach more next month, but needing more funds to do so.
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Global Health and Development Beat
The worst drought to hit Brazil’s biggest city in decades may leave residents with water service only two days a week.
Cases of deadly mosquito-borne Japanese encephalitis have risen nearly five-fold in five years in India’s northeast Assam state as a result of warming weather and changing rainfall, health experts say.
The African Union plans to launch an Ebola fund and disease control center, officials said Wednesday, as aid agency Oxfam warned leaders needed to keep their promises to boost healthcare systems on the continent.
The World Bank says the three countries most affected by Ebola will suffer a combined $1.6 billion in economic losses in 2015 due to the ongoing outbreak. Unemployment rates are also expected to remain high, with cross-border traders, private-sector wage earners and the self-employed among the worst hit.
UN relief efforts in war-torn Syria are struggling to reach 40 percent of civilians in need and face a major funding shortfall, a senior UN aid official said Wednesday.
Madagascar’s government appealed for international aid on Wednesday after a tropical storm earlier this month devastated large swaths of the Indian Ocean island, causing damage worth around $40 million.
The United Kingdom’s top medical research universities spend just two per cent of their health research budgets on work related to health in developing countries, according to a study launched last week.
With international organisations warning that East Ukraine is on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe as its health system collapses, marginalised groups are among those facing the greatest struggle to access even basic health care in the war-torn region.
The largest Ebola unit ever built opened in the Liberian capital Monrovia with 120 beds on August 17 but was immediately overwhelmed, with staff forced to turn patients away at its gates, despite more than doubling its capacity. Five months later to the day it registered no patients at all for the first time, and staff this week marked a drastic retreat of an epidemic which has killed thousands by dismantling and burning the first tent put up at the clinic.
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Spotlight on PSI
Family planning services in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) were virtually nonexistent after civil war destroyed the country’s healthcare infrastructure. Today, a comprehensive range of high-quality family planning products and services are available through the PSI-affiliated Confiance social franchise network, which includes 138 clinics and 138 mobile educators throughout seven provinces.
USAID recently cited the Confiance network as one of the top 10 cases of global health systems strengthening.
The Confiance brand includes oral contraceptives, an intra-uterine device, an injectable contraceptive, an implant, the Standard Days Method (CycleBeads), and an emergency contraceptive. The PSI network creates demand for these products with mass media and interpersonal communication campaigns, which include outreach activities conducted at partner clinics, a trained network of mobile educators, and two toll-free telephone hotlines.
To date, 57,446 calls have been received; community-based health workers through home visits have communicated the importance of family planning and reproductive health to approximately 1.9 million persons.
Keep reading on the Impact blog by going here.
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Buzzing in the Blogs
David Olson writes about family planning in India and Pakistan, based on his recent trip to the two countries. He writes in the Global Health TV blog:
India is far ahead of Pakistan in terms of progress in family planning (see chart). The fertility rate (the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime) is 3.8 in India and 2.7 in Pakistan. In India, the contraceptive prevalence rate for modern methods is 48.5% (and will likely be higher than that when the 2014-15 Demographic and Health Survey comes out later this year) and 26.1% in Pakistan.
Dhanak and Surya networks are both programs of DKT International, a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C. that makes family planning, reproductive health and HIV prevention products and services available to low-income populations through social marketing and social franchising. I was in Pakistan and India to visit both programs.
DKT’s Janani program, one of its oldest, works in Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Assam and West Bengal providing these products and services through social franchising in Surya clinics (both Janani-owned and franchised clinics) and through social marketing in private sector outlets.
DKT Pakistan, one of DKT’s newest programs, has aggressively built up its network of midwife-owned and operated Dhanak clinics to 600 in only two years. It aims to double that, to 1,200, by the end of 2015. The clinics operate in all parts of Pakistan — from the deserts of Sindh in the south to the snow-capped Himalayan peaks in the north.
The Surya and Dhanak social franchising networks are different in some ways (Dhanak clinics are owned by midwives; Surya clinics are owned by Janani or doctors), but they have more commonalities than differences.
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Capital Events
Thursday
9:00 AM – When Women Trade, Can We End Hunger – The Washington International Trade Association
6:00 PM – Global health discussion group happy hour – Young Professionals in Foreign Policy
Friday
8:30 AM – International Health and Nutrition Workgroup Planning Meeting – SID
12:15 PM – Accelerating Progress to Overcome Malnutrition – IFPRI
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By Mark Leon Goldberg and Tom Murphy
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Disclaimer: Opinions presented in this email do not necessarily reflect the views of PSI.
