A mobile gynecology clinic was deployed to Shahid Azadi Mama Alaa primary health clinic, the only health facility in Darbandikhan still functioning after the earthquake, UNFPA stated in a press release.
The clinic is being turned into a makeshift hospital, where several tents will be erected in the courtyard to provide care for women after maternity wards in the area were damaged in the quake and are no longer operational.
The UNFPA also distributed specialized hygiene kits and medicines to more than 500 women and girls.
Over the next week, the agency will also begin providing psychosocial support to traumatized women in Darbandikhan. Similar services have already started in Halabja.
Darbandikhan is the worst earthquake-hit area in the Kurdistan Region.
The 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck near Halabja, Kurdistan Region, near the Iran-Iraq border on the evening of November 12 and could be felt throughout the Middle East. Darbandikhan is about 28 kilometers west of Halabja in Sulaimani province.
Ten people were killed and more than 500 injured in the Kurdistan Region’s Darbandikhan, Halabja, Kalar, and Khanaqin.
The earthquake also called massive damage to private and public property, including Darbandikhan dam along with hospitals in Halabja and Sulaimani.
Baghdad has designated a 10 billion dinar (about $8,584,000) emergency fund for the Ministry of Health for medical supplies.
Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani visited Darbandikhan on Tuesday where he vowed to compensate victims and said that special teams were filing reports of the damage.
With a confirmed death toll of more than 500 people between Kurdish areas of Iraq and Iran, the earthquake was the deadliest in 2017, eclipsing the one that hit Mexico City in September and killed more than 200 people.
