By Kira Walker

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - For years, women and children in Iraq requiring specialized healthcare have had nowhere to go to receive treatment. The lack of facilities means that many children do not receive the treatment they need and die needlessly. Infant mortality rates in Iraq remain among the highest in the world.

The opening of the Kurdistan Children’s Hospital (KCH) in March 2014, the first facility in the region dedicated to the treatment of children, is set to change this.

KCH will be a benchmark in Iraq, providing an international standard of healthcare unrivaled across Iraq, while also assisting in building local capacity and expertise, said Dr. Shawis, chairman and pediatric surgeon at the facility.

“Until local capacity is further developed, the majority of the staff will come from out of country,” Shawis noted.

Located on the outskirts of Erbil, the site for KCH was chosen because of its safe and stable environment and proximity to an international airport.

“The complex includes a 120-bed main building and support buildings, including a hotel, staff accommodation and a supermarket. The clinical facilities will accommodate three operating rooms, an emergency department, an imaging department, specialist outpatient clinics, a pediatric and neo-natal intensive care unit and a women’s hospital,” said Make Architects, who were tasked with designing the hospital.

In 2011, Make Architects were the recipient of a prestigious award from the International Academy for Design and Health for their design of the KCH. In recognition of the changing role of hospitals, their design addresses anticipated socio-economic challenges and envisions an environment that supports health and wellbeing.

“I wanted to use my experience and contacts in medicine to be able to give back to my people. In order to do this and provide high quality care for children a base with international standard is needed from which to begin – the hospital is a practical way to actualize this,” said Shawis, during his acceptance speech for the design award in Boston in 2011.

The hospital’s flexible design -- a radial plan around a central atrium which functions as the social heart of the hospital -- allows for each department, or “arm,” to be extended, or for additional wings to be added in the future without disrupting the operations of other departments.

The vision of KCH is to “provide the highest quality of health services for children and their mothers in a caring, family-orientated environment, respecting the privacy and dignity of the patients as well as giving, hope, compassion and confidence, and also to educate the next generation of pediatric healthcare providers in Iraq.”

The hospital is owned and operated by the Kurdistan Children’s Hospital Foundation, a UK-registered charitable company and supported by private philanthropy.

The vision for the Erbil Children’s Hospital was conceived by Shawis and was initiated with the support of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani.

Though the hospital complex is near completion, sponsors are still needed to support further development of some of the facilities.

In adherence to its not-for-profit management and operation charter, the hospital will reinvest any generated income back into its operations to maintain and enhance the quality of healthcare services.

Forty million dollars in funding and organizational support for the hospital was provided by Oryx Petroleum Corporation Ltd, an independent oil and gas exploration and production company, as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program.

In their production sharing contracts signed with the KRG, international oil companies (IOC’s) are mandated to give back to the communities they operate in.

A spokesperson for Oryx Petroleum said the initial idea to donate to the hospital came from the KRG.

“Oryx Petroleum believes host country populations should derive benefit from the development of petroleum resources. Moreover, we believe we have a critical role in delivering such benefits. Per our philosophy, we have been seeking opportunities to contribute to the community. The hospital project, a project in which we would be able to have meaningful input, was the type of project we were looking for,” the spokesperson said.

Rudaw