Darfur: Haija’s Refugee Story
DARFUR, SUDAN - Haija was four months pregnant when she and her family were forced to leave their home because of fighting in the Darfur region of Sudan. After walking over 35 miles through the hot desert, Haija and her family reached the internal refugee camp at Kalma, where a women’s clinic supported by UNFPA provided the exhausted Haija with urgent prenatal care to protect her health and that of her unborn child. A midwife at the same clinic helped Haija to deliver a healthy baby girl, which she named Hope.
The women’s clinic at Kalma consists of two doctors, four medical assistants and two midwives. The doctors treat up to 60 displaced women per day, with services ranging from family planning to prenatal and postnatal care to treatment for sexual violence, including HIV prevention.
But according to UNFPA, reproductive health services like the ones offered in Kalma were rarely offered in displacement settings before the early 1990's.
“We have come a long way,” said Thoraya Obaid, UNFPA’s Executive Director. “We are seeing a growing awareness among humanitarian partners and donors that providing reproductive health care for refugees can be just as critical to their well-being as food, water and shelter. This is not an either-or-situation. We must provide both.”
UNFPA says that at least some components of reproductive health care are now available to most refugees in non-emergency settings. These services have become increasingly available in many acute emergency situations as well, but requests for funding for such assistance are far less successful than requests for food and other, better-recognized humanitarian needs.
Haija was one of the lucky ones. Of the more than one million people who have been internally displaced within Sudan since fighting broke out in Darfur in March 2003, many remain beyond the reach of humanitarian agencies. UNFPA is working to improve services in settlements like the one at Kalma, and to extend them to as many displaced people as possible across Darfur.
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