WHO report highlights Jordan’s strained healthcare services

AMMAN — Jordan faces the challenge of meeting the health demands of a vast number of migrants and refugees, according to a recent report by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

The “Refugee and Migrant Health Country Profile” report indicated that healthcare becomes more accessible when individuals from both the host community and refugees are covered by health insurance.

Maternal and child preventive healthcare services, family planning, infant and child feeding programmes and routine vaccination services are available free of charge for all refugees with a valid Asylum Seeker Certificate (for all nationalities), and the service card issued by the Ministry of Interior (for registered Syrian refugees only) at Ministry of Health facilities, the report said.  However, data points on access to essential healthcare services for migrants who do not have these documents are limited.

The influx of Syrian refugees has placed pressure on the national health system, the report pointed out.

Although Jordan has a well-established system for the surveillance of communicable diseases, migrants and refugees are still imperilled by emerging and re-emerging diseases, vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks, tuberculosis and parasitic infections in some camp settings. 

Nonetheless, camps have established surveillance systems with reporting mechanisms related to health service provision, and rapid response teams are being used for active surveillance, including COVID-19 response, within camps, the WHO report said.

“Clearly, covering the cost of refugees, including health costs, under certain circumstances, affected the status of the state budget because a large part has been covered by the Jordanian government,” said economist Wajdi Makhamreh, commenting on the report.

“The budget deficit rose and contributed to increased debt levels,” in an unprecedented manner, he said.

“Jordan gave its utmost efforts to serve refugees, and maintain health services and other services, such as education. The decline of international aid certainly affected Jordan in a negative way,” he said.

According to United Nations data, the total number of international migrants in Jordan is estimated to be 3,346,703, which constitutes 33.1 per cent of the country’s total population, and according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the country hosts 757,805 refugees and asylum seekers, of whom 12.5 per cent are children under five years of age and almost 5 per cent are over 60.

By country of origin, the registered refugees and asylum seekers are 88.5 per cent Syrian, 8.8 per cent Iraqi and 1.7 per cent Yemeni; almost 1 per cent are from Somalia and Sudan, and 0.2 per cent are from other countries. 

Jordan has been hosting more than 2 million Palestinian refugees registered with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) — the largest number of Palestinian refugees across all UNRWA fields.

In addition to being a host for refugees and migrants from neighbouring countries, Jordan is also facing migration of its skilled labourers to other countries: An estimated 10 per cent of Jordan’s nationals are expatriates.