Iraq: IDPs from Covid-19

Audio 02:30

By: Sami Boukhelifa Follow

Confinement, curfew, like almost all the countries of the world, Iraq has also put in place restrictive measures to fight against the coronavirus. Only here, the country has nearly 1.5 million displaced and refugees. So how do we deal with the epidemic when we live in a tent or in precarious housing? There are obviously the risks linked to the virus, but also the psycho-social impact on these often very fragile populations. The NGO Première Urgence Internationale has set up a monitoring program to help vulnerable people in the camps, but also in Iraqi cities.

Publicity

Khawla Khalil is 47 years old, with her husband and their five children, they live in Fallujah, about sixty kilometers west of Baghdad. In 2014, while the Islamic State group seized their city, the terrorized family fled the fighting and found refuge in Erbil in the north of the country. A forced exodus, years of hardship, which have repercussions today on the youngest: “  My son and my daughter are 10 and 11 years old and suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome. My daughter always pees in bed, my son has serious attention problems. Anyway what can you expect when you grow up under the bombs?  "

The Khalil children have been followed since January in a health center set up by Première Urgence Internationale. The appearance of Covid-19, confinement, gave rise to new anxieties in them, but also in the other patients of Shakir Hameed, one of the psychosocial workers trained by the NGO: “  When a person has all his mental faculties, it can cope with this Covid-19 epidemic by respecting the rules of social distancing or by respecting confinement, etc. But a psychologically unstable person does not live well with this kind of situation. These are additional stressors for her. But what is more serious, we follow people with suicidal tendencies, for whom the virus is precisely a way to end their lives. So we have to be very careful with them.  "

A difficult mission. In full confinement there is no question of bringing patients together in discussion groups. Première urggence internationale has set up teleconsultation: “  I call patients twice an hour each week. But this remains a remote consultation. It's not as good as being face to face with patients. As a psychosocial worker, facial expressions, hand gestures have a meaning for me but unfortunately by phone I work blind.  "

War after war, the displaced or refugees in Iraq experienced a real trauma. According to Ondine Tsaconas, head of mission of First International Emergency in Iraq, in the majority of cases simple psychological follow-ups can relieve them: “  In Iraq, NGOs regret being the only ones to have set up these psychological follow-up programs. The government, for its part, is in a hurry to close the IDP camps. Often forcing very vulnerable families to return to their villages still in ruins. "

Newsletter Receive all international news directly in your mailbox

Follow all international news by downloading the RFI application

• Coronavirus
• Iraq
• Refugees

On the same subject

International reporting

Covid-19 in Iraqi Kurdistan: health emergency or political manipulation?

Series

Iraq: the coronavirus, a crisis which is added to other crises

Coronavirus in Iraq further exacerbates country's crisis