Press release

Iraq. AICS and UPP alongside the people of Mosul and Nineveh

The third phase of the "Salamtak" programme, financed by theItalian Agency for Development Cooperation (AICS ) and implemented by Un Ponte Per (UPP) to ensure access to mental health, psychosocial support and maternal and child health services to families and women in the Nineveh Plain,is now underway.

Rome, 25 March 2021 - The third phase of "Salamtak" (Your Health), a mental health, psychosocial support and maternal and child health programme-funded by theItalian Agency for Development Cooperation (AICS) and implemented by the Italian NGO Un Ponte Per (UPP)-launched in 2018 to respond to the needs of the Iraqi population of the Nineveh Plain and in particular the city of Mosul, Iraq, is now underway.

The aim of the work over these years has been to guarantee access to the health system, protect the mental and reproductive health of Iraqi families and women in the area long occupied by Daesh (Islamic State) and still struggling with a slow and complex process of reconstruction and return to normality.
Between November 2019 and December 2020, thanks to Phase II of the project, 3012 women and girls accessed the services offered, with as many as 1938 psychosocial support sessions and 6290 people in total reached by our outreach campaigns.

The specific aim of this third phase will be to further improve access to primary and secondary health services for communities in the area, while continuing to support the national health system with a view to strengthening it.

In particular, the intervention will focus in the city of Mosul, where a department for mental health and psychosocial support services will be built inside the Al Salam hospital (East Mosul), and in the Primary Health Centres of Hermat and Nimrod, where gynaecological examinations and mental health services for women will be guaranteed. In addition, the support that AICS and UPP have been guaranteeing for years to the Ma'an Na'ud Multipurpose Health Centre in Bashiqa will continue, where specific paediatric services will be added this year to the reproductive health services already guaranteed, as requested by the population.

The 10-month intervention is expected to reach a total of more than 7,760 people. Among them, almost 3,000 women and adolescents will have access to reproductive health services and specific paediatric counselling for their children. More than 1,200 individual and collective advanced psychosocial support sessions will also be provided.

"Salamtak III" is part of a broader framework of interventions that UPP, thanks to the valuable support of AICS, has been carrying out in Iraq, and in particular in the Nineveh Plain and Mosul, since the beginning of the humanitarian emergency in 2014.