Shipping medical samples to outside laboratories costs time and money, but that’s what many clinics serving Iraqi refugees in Jordan had to do. Health providers and patients all complained that patients were often discouraged from getting all the tests they needed done because the process was too cumbersome.

Enter International Relief & Development’s Strategic Health Support (SHS) program. Funded by the U.S. State Department, the main goal of SHS is to provide access to quality primary and secondary health care and medications to 76,000 of the most socially and economically vulnerable Iraqi refugees and other nationalities in Jordan.

In an effort to bridge this gap in health care services, SHS outfitted a complete laboratory with equipment. This mobile laboratory, which services three partner clinics located in Amman, Zarqa, and Irbid, offers additional diagnostic care to support the primary and secondary health care services offered by SHS.

Now with the lab up and running, people are accessing services that were previously unavailable. “I am grateful that now I can visit the clinic and have all my child’s blood tests taken at the same location,” said patient Um Omar. “I can also afford to have the test, with the lower cost of the lab.”

Since the opening of the laboratory, IRD has seen a large increase in the number of lab tests. From October 2008 to October 2009, over 9,000 tests were performed. “I am very happy that IRD was able to provide a laboratory to give support to our clinics,” said a clinic’s doctor. “My colleagues and I are now able to give faster diagnosis and treatment to our patients.”