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Iraq: rehabilitation of an operating theater at the Sinjar Primary Health Care Center
The inauguration of the surgical technical platform at the Sinjar Primary Health Care Center in Iraq marks a key stage in the reconstruction of the health infrastructure in the devastated town of Sinjar.
On February 4, 2020, Dr. Éric Cheysson, President of La Chaîne de l’Espoir, Bruno Aubert, French Ambassador to Iraq, along with representatives of the Crisis and Support Center (CDCS) of the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs, Nadia’s Initiative Foundation and Iraqi authorities (Ministry of Health, Nineveh Governorate, local authorities) inaugurated the surgical technical platform of the Sinjar Primary Health Care Center (SPHCC) in Sinjar. This rehabilitation project is the fruit of close Franco-Iraqi collaboration.
Between 2014 and 2015, the inhabitants of the Sinjar district, the historic home of the Yezidi community, in northwestern Iraq, were the victims of atrocities committed by the jihadists of the Islamic State (EI). Men and the elderly were murdered, young boys forcibly conscripted and young girls enslaved. The rest of the population fled, notably to Kurdistan in the north or to Syria. Even today, the town and its surroundings are devastated, infrastructure is struggling to be rebuilt and exiled or displaced Sinjaris are reluctant to return. Faced with this situation, La Chaîne de l’Espoir has decided to help rebuild the town’s health infrastructure. The Nadia’s Initiative Foundation, which helps survivors of sexual violence in particular, and its founder Nadia Murad, Nobel Peace Prize winner and spokeswoman for the Yezidi community, support this initiative.
Active in Sinjar to build a new hospital structure, La Chaîne de l’Espoir has mobilized to reinforce the only medical structure still in operation after the departure of the Islamic State, the Sinjar Primary Health Care Center. It was there that the teams from the town’s former general hospital, which had been totally destroyed, were assigned. As the study phase and then the construction of a hospital structure requires several years of work, La Chaîne de l’Espoir has decided to rehabilitate a technical platform within the SPHCC in order to improve the surgical offer on site as quickly as possible.
