offer family planning services with counselling that emphasises the importance of birth spacing as a factor in maternal and child health. Agency clinics also supervise the provision of food aid to nursing and pregnant mothers who need it, and six clinics in the Gaza Strip have their own maternity units. Infant mortality rates have for some time been lower among refugees than the World Health Organization's benchmark for the developing world. UNRWA provides refugees with assistance in meeting the costs of hospitalisation either by partially reimbursing them, or by negotiating contracts with government, NGOs, and private hospitals. UNRWA's environmental health services program "controls the quality of drinking water, provides sanitation, and carries out vector and rodent control in refugee camps, thus reducing the risk of epidemics." UNRWA Microfinance Department UNRWA's Microfinance Department (MD) aims to alleviate poverty and support economic development in the refugee community by providing capital investment and working capital loans at commercial rates. The programme seeks to be as close to self-supporting as possible. It has a strong record of creating employment, generating income, and empowering refugees. The Microfinance Department is an autonomous financial unit within UNRWA, established in 1991 to provide microfinance services to Palestine refugees, as well as poor or marginal groups living and working in close proximity to them. With operations in three countries, the MD currently has the broadest regional coverage of any microfinance institution in the Middle East. Having begun its operations in the Palestinian territories, it remains the largest non-bank financial intermediary in the West Bank and Gaza. Key figures, cumulative as of 2014 are: 324,994 number of loans awarded US$368.1 million value of loans awarded 33% youth outreach 38% women outreach Emergency operations UNRWA takes a wide variety of actions to mitigate the effects of emergencies on the lives of Palestine refugees. Particularly in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (occupied Palestinian territory (oPt)) there has been ongoing intervention made necessary by, e.g., the 1967 War as well as the first and second intifadas, and the 2014 Gaza War. Up until this point, the reconstruction work at Nahr el-Bared Palestine refugee camp in Lebanon has been the largest reconstruction project ever undertaken by UNRWA. This work began in 2009 and was made necessary when the camp was destroyed in the fighting between the Lebanese Armed Forces and Fatah al-Islam in 2007. UNRWA evaluates the ongoing conflict in Syria as