IRANIAN EARTHQUAKE SURVIVORS FACE CONTINUING HEALTH EMERGENCY, UNFPA WARNS

Appeals Seeks to Assist Vulnerable Women and Families

(Reissued as received.)

NEW YORK, 23 January (UNFPA)–- Following last month’s deadly earthquake in the city of Bam, deteriorating hygienic conditions and a critical lack of reproductive health services continue to threaten the well-being of thousands of Iranian women, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), warned today.

In response, the UNFPA immediately provided emergency funds to the Ministry of Health and Medical Education and other national partners, at their request, to purchase medical equipment and reproductive health supplies, and is now working with the Ministry and the Iran Family Planning Association to instal 360 sanitary points, including showers, throughout the affected area.

The 26 December earthquake destroyed or severely damaged some 85 per cent of all buildings in Bam, including all three local hospitals.  Officials have put the death toll at 41,000.  Devastation of infrastructure has been compounded by the loss of over half the city’s health-care personnel, paralysing the health-care system throughout the surrounding district.

The UNFPA took part in a United Nations inter-agency assessment mission which resulted in a $31.3 million humanitarian appeal for immediate post-quake needs.  As part of that appeal, the Fund is asking donors for $710,000 to meet the minimum reproductive health needs of the affected population and provide increased protection for women over the next three months.

“As survivors return to the area and reconstruction begins, reproductive health concerns must be a humanitarian priority”, said Sharareh Amirkhalili, UNFPA Assistant Representative in Iran.  “The loss of health workers and services have left pregnant women extremely vulnerable, while exposing many others to the risk of unwanted pregnancy and reproductive tract infections.”

She added that many women and girls were made even more vulnerable because their responsibility for surviving family members left them unable to report to distribution centres to receive humanitarian aid.

“We’re hearing reports of women in desperate economic situations because they’ve lost all their adult family members, yet most of the people reporting to the distribution centres are young men.”

To address this, the UNFPA, the Centre for Women’s Participation and the Literacy Movement Organization are working to establish special channels to assist women and families that have lost their primary breadwinners.

Other priority areas identified in the UNFPA appeal include:

-- Establishment of temporary health facilities;

-- Provision of necessary medical and reproductive health supplies;

-- Reproductive health training for health workers;

-- Dissemination of information to the public about various health dangers;

-- Special programmes to address the vulnerability of women and girls, including the formation of networks of disaster-affected women, and the drafting of legislation for the protection of women and girls in disaster-affected areas.

The UNFPA is the world's largest multilateral source of population assistance, providing support to developing countries, at their request, to meet reproductive health needs, and collect and analyse population data to support development efforts.

For more information, contact:  William A. Ryan, tel.: +1 (212) 297-5279,  e- mail:  ryanw@unfpa.org; or David DelVecchio, tel.: +1 (212) 297-4975, e-mail:  delvecchio@unfpa.org; or visit our Web site at:  www.unfpa.org

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