SUDAN – The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and World Health Organization (WHO) have entered into a strategic deal to enhance health services for refugees and host communities in Sudan.

The UN Refugee Agency is a global organization dedicated to saving lives, protecting rights and building a better future for refugees, forcibly displaced communities and stateless people to help safeguard fundamental human rights and develop solutions that ensure people can build a better future.

The partnership between WHO and UNHCR seeks to address Sudan’s fragile health system which is buckling under recurrent multiple emergencies coupled with the current economic crisis further exacerbating health and nutrition conditions for refugees and the communities which host them.

We deliver life-saving assistance, help safeguard fundamental human rights, and develop solutions that ensure people have a safe place called home where they can build a better future. We also work to ensure that stateless people are granted a nationality.

The collaboration for emergency response in Susan comes at a time when areas in which refugees live often have limited health infrastructure and suffer shortages of medical personnel and supplies to help coordination of emergency response activities.

The UNHCR – WHO collaboration at a time when multiple emergencies and the ongoing economic crisis are undermining a fragile health system hence the Sudanese health system will benefit from the know-how and from the renewed joint efforts towards health for all.

The recent partnership will further build on a 2020 global memorandum of understanding to sustain the availability and quality of essential health services in Sudan since the agreement enacts the 2 agencies’ first comprehensive partnership in the country beyond the response to emergencies.

According to the WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean, UNHCR and WHO have supported early warning systems to detect potential disease outbreaks in a timely manner in concerted efforts to effect swift action and avoid further spread.

The international agencies also continue to provide medicines and medical supplies to primary health care facilities in refugee locations across Sudan including delivering life-saving assistance to about 32 refugee camps accessible by local populations.

In addition, the United Nations agencies will strengthen advocacy efforts to the Government of Sudan on key health issues affecting refugees such as their full access to national health services which is crucial in supporting refugees’ access vital health services in the country.

Health is a fundamental right for everyone. Increasing access to health care for forcibly displaced populations is one of the pledges Sudan committed to at the Global Refugee Forum in 2019,” stressed Axel Bisschop, UNHCR’s Representative in Sudan.

Moreover, the new partnership defines UNHCR and WHO roles and strategic areas of collaboration, maximizing coordination and optimizing resources when responding to refugee influxes and other emergencies affecting both refugees and implicated Sudanese populations.

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