CONTENTS
November, 1996 |
Most refugees are not currently living in emergency situations, although they may have at first. Refugee situations rarely resolve themselves quickly. Refugees can stay in a camp for as long as seven years, on average, and some have lived in camps for more than 20 years (119). Afghanistan, Palestine, and Rwanda, for example, are refugee situations for which there has been no quick resolution. Once the emergency phase ends, refugee service providers should examine the broad range of reproductive health needs of refugees and displaced persons, including needs for prenatal, delivery, and postnatal services, STD prevention and treatment and HIV prevention, and family planning counseling and services (119). While the MISP will improve emergency responses, a longer-term solution requires providing reproductive health care as part of any health package. For example, a field manual under development by the Reproductive Health for Refugees Consortium (see sidebar, International Relief Agencies) recommends that reproductive health services be combined with other primary health care for refugees (299).
More coordination among service sectors is important to serving refugees, because many agencies provide health care. United Nations agencies, international relief organizations, governments, and nongovernmental organizations all work with refugees, often in the same camp (299). Several different agencies may provide similar services. In Thailand, for example, seven agencies from five countries provided family planning for refugees (37). Coordination can help avoid or resolve the conflicts that sometimes arise among service agencies and between these agencies and the countries to which refugees flee (310). Agencies can jointly plan and deliver services, as did Marie Stopes International and the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1993 in providing reproductive health kits for refugees in Bosnia (255). Similarly, in 1995 the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and UNHCR together provided reproductive health services in a camp in Tanzania for refugees from Rwanda (78). |