The Health System and Health Care Levels

Primary health care level (primary health care centers)

Health centers and emergency hospital units are considered the first places the patient usually visits, and these health centers are distributed all over the cities, sub districts and villages of the governorate. They are estimated to be 127 centers, 69 of them are managed by doctors and 58 by paramedical staff. Of these 127 centers, 31 are in Duhok district, 16 in Zakho, 16 in Akre, 11 in Bardarash, 21 in Amedi, 17 in Semel and 15 in Shekhan. Sixteen of these health centers are specialized ones.

The main services in primary health care centers include:

• Preventive services
  1. Prevention and control of endemic and communicable diseases through immunization and other activities,
  2. Increasing people’s educational level regarding control and prevention of preventable health problems such as sexually transmitted diseases (including AIDS), diarrheal diseases, and viral Hepatitis,
  3. Maternal and child health care including school health and family planning,
  4. Vaccination against the main communicable diseases,
  5. Child nutrition, monitoring and management of malnourished children,
  6. Mental health care.
• Curative services
  1. Management of common acute illnesses (registering and managing patients),
  2. Provision of different laboratory tests,
  3. Provision of the main medicines,
  4. Provision of emergency services for different sorts of accidents,
  5. Referring of patients to hospitals and specialized centers on need.

Secondary health care level (general hospitals in districts)

There are three general hospitals within this level located in Amedi, Zakho and Akre districts, as well as a small hospital in Kani Mase subdistrict (related to Amedi district). The numbers of beds in these hospitals are 75, 148, 66 and 13 respectively. These three general hospitals provide medical services of medicine, surgery, gynecology and obstetrics, and pediatrics, as well as coronary care units, X-ray, sonography, laboratory, medications …. etc

Tertiary health care level (teaching hospitals)

This level includes the teaching hospitals in Duhok district and the highly specialized medical services.

The following hospitals in Duhok district are included:

• Azadi Teaching Hospital,
• Heevi Pediatrics Hospital,
• Emergency Hospital,
• Burn and Plastic Surgery Hospital.

Azadi teaching hospital is the unique modern hospital in Duhok governorate providing rather contemporary health services via new medical equipments, specialist doctors and trained medical staff. This 500 bed hospital was built by the Japanese company “Marubini” in 1984 with a cost of 45 million $, It has been frequently renovated in the last years (after the Glorious Uprising in 1991) with the addition of new departments such as CT scan and MRI, mental health departments, ednoscopy, heart center and others.

The main health services provided by Azadi teaching hospital

• Examining, treating and admitting patients referred by health centers and other hospitals
• Management of emergency cases of medicine and obstetrics
• Different surgical operations according to special schedules
• Advanced machines and equipments like Lapasoscopy, Lithotripsy, MRI, CT scan, Mammography, Doppler US
• Specific laboratory tests
• Training the students of medical school, higher education and medical institutes,
  Continuing medical education

The main health services provided by Heevi hospital

The hospital contains 138 beds delivering secondary and tertiary medical services for children less than 14 years.

The main health services provided by emergency hospital

The hospital contains 129 beds delivering secondary and tertiary medical services for victims of different accidents and for those on need of general surgery, orthopedics and neurosurgery operations.

The main health services provided by burn and plastic surgery hospital

The hospital was officially opened on the 11th of March 2008. It contains 50 beds and has main departments receiving different burn cases, with performing the needed surgical operations for them, as well as plastic surgery operations.

The main health services of hospitals and health centers in the General Directorate of Health-Duhok in 2006