Clinical Management of Rape Mobile application

Purpose of Activity/Assignment:

Despite this effort to build capacities of frontline health workers to provide CMR services in lebanon to rape survivors since the beginning of the Syrian crisis; Several challenges remain, such as: attitudes and behaviour of frontline health workers towards GBV survivors remains judgemental due to gender norms, the high turnover of staff in health facilities means there is a need for ongoing capacity building to ensure incoming staff have the required knowledge and skills to replace those leaving; overloaded health staff in public health facilities do not  have time to refresh their knowledge and skills on GBV and CMR after they have attended the trainings and coaching sessions.

It is expected that trained medical staff will be able to provide better care and support to survivors of sexual assault by accessing on their phones the downloadable CMR application. The CMR application will have an offline user-friendly content, summarizing the steps of CMR treatment (in an age and gender sensitive manner, taking into account the specific needs of girls, boys, women, and men) as well as tips and guidance on soft skills to deal with survivors of GBV in a survivor-centred manner. In addition, that app will be linked to the Respond APP which contains referral pathway for case management and Psychosocial support for GBV survivors in Lebanon.  CMR is a lifesaving treatment and if not provided appropriately, further harm can be done to survivors, using technology and mobile phones is therefore essential to support quality care to survivors.

Scope of work:

The CMR application is an offline downloadable app (for both Android and iOS) available to staff in the already trained facilities that will summarize in a user-friendly manner the key steps to provide CMR treatment to all survivors, regardless of their sex, age, nationality. The application provide tips on soft skills, such as listening tips when dealing with young children, and support users to comply with a survivor centred approach (following guidelines and national legislation on mandatory reporting of sexual violence to the authorities according to the age of the survivor), and support to know where and how to refer survivors for other services available in their area (based on the GBV referral pathways developed by the SGBV sector).UNICEF will work closely with MOPH and the CMRWG members, especially IRC to adapt the CMR training tools  used in Lebanon to an app in an easy to use format. These tools were used to conduct face-to-face trainings for health care facilities and are therefore familiar to the healthcare providers targeted here. In addition, the application will be available in both English and Arabic as the training tools, originally in English, were translated into Arabic by UNICEF Lebanon at the beginning of the Syria crisis. As the target group of this initiative are the frontline healthcare providers who have already been trained on CMR and GBV soft skills, it is estimated that this initiative will benefit 37 medical facilities throughout the Lebanese territory and that over 550 health frontline workers will benefit from it to provide lifesaving treatment to survivors of sexual assault and refer them in a timely manner to appropriate services for their protection, empowerment and wellbeing, according to the GBV sector standards and principles. In 2019, Unicef along with Abaad created the first version, functional proto type of the mobile application. The next phase is to make the content more dynamic and adjustable by country in order to scale up the App to be utilised by different countries in the MENA region or more.  In addition, the App will be developed in to be under iOS and not only Android. The Application to be published under the Unicef play store and Apple store.