Expecting Mothers Worry About Conditions in Kurdistan Refuge

[Aslan]

SULAIMANI, Kurdistan Region – Saruna Saeed, a Syrian-Kurdish refugee whose two children were born by Caesarian section, is nine months pregnant and languishing at the Arbat refugee camp in Iraqi Kurdistan.
She has not seen a doctor for months and fears delivering the baby at the refugee facility, which houses 1,000 mostly Syrian Kurds who have been arriving in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan Region in large numbers to escape the civil war in their neighboring homeland.

“I delivered my other two children with C-section surgery. I am very concerned that this camp is not a place to deliver a baby in,” Saeed said.

But health officials in Sulaimani province, where the camp is located, insist that an on-site medical center can deal with pregnancies, saying that special cases are transferred to hospitals outside.

“We transfer pregnant mothers to a hospital close by for natural births. However, mothers who might need surgery to deliver their babies will be sent to the main hospital in Sulaimani,” said Omer Mirza, an employee at the medical center.

“The medical center has the potential to provide urgent aid to pregnant mothers before they are transferred to the hospital,” said health department spokesperson Symanad Khalil, who added that the center is staffed by a pediatrician and maternity specialist.

Khalil said that a mobile medical team of volunteer doctors and nurses visits the camp daily.

The World Health Organization (WHO) calls on governments and humanitarian agencies to always be mindful of pregnant mothers during disasters. “They require physiological and physical support,” the WHO says on its web page.

By UN estimates, out of the two million Syrian refugees who have fled the civil war about 200,000 are in the Kurdistan Region. Some 50,000 poured in last month, after Kurdistan officials reopened a border crossing.

The number of newborns among the refugees, who are mostly housed at the Arbat and Domiz camps, is unknown.

According to media reports quoting UN officials at the Zatari refugee camp in Jordan, which houses more than 100,000 Syrian refugees, a dozen babies are born every day.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has provided some care for pregnant mothers at the Domiz camp.

Hogr Ismail, the father of a newborn, said that his wife had delivered at the hospital in Sulaimani.”Thank God both my wife and the baby are doing well,” he added.

Comments


1 0 PDK Kerkuk | 8 hours ago
Not even genocides and massacres can reduce the numbers of the Kurds. Every new born Kurdish children is a gift for Kurdistan, the Kurdish population must rise, we suffered so much as a minority. Every Kurd should donate something for the refugees.