How
Much Can Iraq Survive
By Ali al-Fadhily
10 April, 2007
Inter
Press Service
BAGHDAD, Apr 5 (IPS) - Iraqis surviving violence are
not so sure they can also survive disease.
"Iraq was known to be
the best in healthcare in the region," Dr. Iyad Muhammad from Ramadi
General Hospital told IPS. "Best doctors, hospitals, nurses and
cheapest medicines. The situation now is the opposite."
Dr. Muhammad said several
doctors have been killed, and many more have fled the country. Patients
are looking to follow them too, he said, with many prepared to sell
their property to go abroad for treatment.
"Our situation now has
become worse than during the sanctions period (in the 1990s after the
first Gulf war) when more than one million died and we had very little
medicine and supplies to treat them."
Iraq's health index has deteriorated
to a level not seen since the 1950s, Joseph Chamie, former director
of the United Nations Population Division and an Iraq specialist has
said.
With only sparse care now
available at hospitals, Iraqis in need cross the border to Syria and
Jordan for treatment. That comes at a price because as foreigners they
can go only to private hospitals.
Iraqi officials say remedies
are on the way. "There have been many contracts to construct new
hospitals, and our ministry is studying more all over Iraq," Ahmed
Hussein from the Iraqi Ministry of Health told IPS. "The existing
hospitals are old and we would rather build new ones."
But widespread corruption
has been reported in the Ministry of Health, which is being led by politicians
with no experience in healthcare. The ministry is officially led by
a member of the movement of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Sectarianism determines who
gets the kind of treatment still available.
"You go to a hospital
and you find pictures of clerics all over the place, as if you were
in a shrine," Qassim Brissam, a Shia Iraqi analyst in London told
IPS on telephone. "Clerics are not doctors, and they should not
run hospitals."
Iraqi doctors are painfully
aware that growing sectarianism has worsened the deteriorating health
system.
"I appeared on a documentary
concerning Iraqi hospitals, and that was the biggest mistake I ever
committed," Dr. Rafi Jassim from Baghdad told IPS. "I was
lucky to learn in proper time that militias were to raid my house that
night. Now I am on the run just like any fugitive criminal, and my family
faces the threat of a terrorist attack any moment."
A combination of sanctions,
war and occupation has brought to Iraq the world's worst deterioration
in child mortality rate. According to a report 'The State of the World's
Children' released by UNICEF this year, Iraq's mortality rate for children
under five was 50 per 1000 live births in 1990, and 125 in 2005, an
annual average deterioration of 6.1 percent.
When the U.S.-led invasion
was launched in 2003, the Bush administration pledged to cut Iraq's
child mortality rate by half by 2005. Instead, the rate has worsened,
now to 130 in 2006, according to Iraqi Health Ministry figures.
Availability of medical supplies
continues to be a critical factor.
"We have been exporters
of medicines to Iraq, but we are not able to get any contract now to
supply the Ministry of Health with medicines," Dr. Hammed al-Nuaimy,
manager of a large medical supply company told IPS in Baghdad. "This
is the case even though we always submit the best prices and brands
of European origin."
Al-Nuaimy would not say why
his company failed to get supply contracts despite competitive offers.
"I leave it for you and your readers to answer," he said.
"We are being ignored
by our government and by the Americans," 55-year-old Hammad Hussein
from Fallujah told IPS on a visit to Baghdad. "The promises of
a better life have just turned out to be ugly death."
Hussein added, "Our
hospitals and clinics are paralysed and we do not find the simplest
treatment, so we always have to buy medicines from the commercial market
which means we have to sell something like a refrigerator or a TV set
to cure a sick member of the family."
Sanaa Sulayman, studying
for a biology degree at the University of Baghdad's science department
told IPS that no one seems to look at health in Iraq from the environmental
perspective.
"The huge amounts of
explosives dropped on Iraq including those 'special weapons' like radioactive
Depleted Uranium and white phosphorous have caused a dramatic increase
in numbers of patients and severity of diseases," Sulayman said.
"It is still getting worse by the day and no one seems to care."
A dentist from Fallujah told
IPS that most Iraqis have been neglecting dental care because they are
unable to afford it.
"Dental care is considered
a luxury by Iraqis now, and they will not visit our clinics unless they
have an intolerable toothache," said the doctor. "Most of
them would ask for a tooth to be pulled rather than filling it because
they cannot afford proper treatment."
The mental health situation
is equally grim for Iraqis.
In a study 'Psychological
effects of war on Iraqis' the Association of Iraqi Psychologists (AIP)
reported in January 2007 that of 2,000 people interviewed in all 18
Iraqi provinces, 92 percent said they feared being killed in an explosion.
Sixty percent of those interviewed
said the level of violence had caused them to have panic attacks, and
this prevented them from going out because they feared they would be
the next victims.
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