Identifying and scoping new options for healthcare system strengthening in North East Syria

Background and Objectives: Nowadays, North East Syria (NES) remains a complex humanitarian emergency, still bearing the devastating consequences of over a decade of ongoing hostilities that caused more than 400.000 deaths in Syria and led it to be the country with the worlds highest number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) until last year. NES security situation is still particularly fragile and highly dynamic, prone to escalations with the persistence of active armed clashes, airstrikes and shelling. The health sector has been severely hit by the conflict, which caused widespread destruction of healthcare infrastructure, fragmented health governance, depletion of healthcare providers and scarcity of supplies and equipment. The primary purpose of our work is to comprehensively assess and map primary healthcare facilities and services currently present at territorial level in NES, as well as critical gaps and implementation capacities for each specific area, to identify new options for strengthening the healthcare systems, define future priorities and strategic actions to guide the decision-making process and help define a minimum health service package (MHSP). Methods: This study will use secondary data review from data service providers and open-source research, in combination with extensive healthcare facilities assessment at each sub-district level (area-based) and key informant (KI) methodology at different levels of the healthcare sector: KI interviews will be carried out to relevant community leaders with sector-specific knowledge, healthcare professionals, hospital management and health experts. Therefore, the analysis will be based on both qualitative and quantitative data. Results and Conclusion: Limitations and gaps in available healthcare services are hard to identify due to impediments in data collection: access restrictions, insecurity, rapidly changing governance dynamics and other challenges hinder the capacity to conduct analysis in the area. Thus, this report may not capture some of the most recent events and trends. Results are still ongoing.