Aid for healthcare in Iraq slashed as region bakes in summer heat

LONDON — Health programmes supported by aid agencies in Iraq are facing drastic cuts in the face of severe funding shortages, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has said, leaving people exposed to diseases as searing summer temperatures hit the Middle East.

Almost 3 million people will have no access to urgently needed services because 84 per cent of the country’s donor-funded health programmes were shut down last month, a WHO spokesman said in Geneva on Tuesday.

The news comes as Iraq, and the rest of the Middle East, faces a debilitating heatwave, with temperatures topping 50 degrees at a time when almost 1 million Iraqi children are living in refugee camps.

“There has been an increasing amount of reports of families and children suffering from dehydration, diarrhoea and heatstrokes,” said Cecil Laguardia of World Vision, a charity.

The loss of 184 health service providers, shut down in 10 of Iraq’s 19 governorates, will leave refugees, internally displaced people and host communities without any access to critical care, WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said on Tuesday.

The projects shut down included those in areas of heavy fighting, such as the area around Dohuk Governorate in the north of the country, and near Ramadi in Anbar province, he said.

The fall of Ramadi in May was the Iraqi army’s worst defeat since Daesh militants swept through north Iraq last summer, raising questions about the ability of the Shiite-led Baghdad government to overcome the sectarian divide that has helped Daesh expand in the Sunni heartland of Anbar.

Last year Iraq had two cases of polio, a crippling and incurable disease which can cause irreversible paralysis within hours, but has been eradicated in much of the world.

There are 5.8 million children who need to be vaccinated against polio this year and next, said Jasarevic, but the programme faces a $45 million funding gap.

The 16 per cent of health programmes which remain open are vulnerable to closure later this year if more funds do not become available, the WHO said. Of $60.9 million requested by the WHO for healthcare in Iraq, just $5.1 million has materialised.

“While we are grateful to donors who have helped us decrease the health impact of this crisis on the people of Iraq, we are far from meeting even the most basic health needs,” said Dr Syed Jaffar Hussain, a WHO spokesman in the country.