Cholera
Threat In Basra
By Ewen MacAskill in Baghdad
The Guardian
10 May , 2003
Conditions in hospitals throughout
Iraq have descended to new levels of squalor because of a combination
of looting, post-Saddam power struggles and the failure of the US and
aid agencies to provide medicine and equipment.
International health organisations warn that the Iraqi medical service,
having struggled through 12 years of sanctions, could collapse.
In Basra, doctors are awaiting
the results of tests into 17 suspected cases of cholera at two hospitals.
Residents have been drinking from rivers contaminated with sewage since
water supplies were disrupted at the start of the war. The World Health
Organisation (WHO), which has a surveillance team in Basra, warned of
a possible cholera epidemic.
Even before the war, Iraqi
hospitals were short of medicines and equipment that were blocked by
international sanctions, mainly for cancer treatment, but conditions
have deteriorated sharply over the last month.
Ruth Walkup, from the US
department of health and human services, said the WHO was worried "that
the very fragile system that worked [before the war] is getting ready
to fall apart if it's not bolstered very quickly".
At Qadissiya hospital in
Sadr City, home to 2 million of Baghdad's poorest inhabitants, doctors
are struggling to cope with power shortages, lack of water and severe
shortages of medicine. The wards are overflowing and dirty.
With no ministry of health,
the doctors are trying to do their jobs in the middle of a power struggle
between Shia clerics, supported by gunmen, and US forces for control
of Qadissiya and other hospitals.
A western doctor, working
for an international aid agency, described the hospitals as the "new
frontline". Shia clerics and gunmen took over the protection of
Qadissiya to prevent further looting. US patrols initially avoided confrontation
but on Thursday night were reported to have seized control of the hospital,
only to lose it later in the day.
A month after the fall of
Baghdad, neither the US nor international aid agencies are providing
enough supplies. Iraqis express resentment that the speed and efficiency
of the US war machine is not being directed at postwar problems.
Kevin Henry, the director
for the humanitarian group Care, said it remained very difficult to
deliver needed health supplies into Iraq. "Things are still quite
chaotic and we have only been able to very slowly move additional supplies
and people in. That's in large measure due to the breakdown in law and
order, and that has ripple effects on everything else."
He added: "We have now
moved in two or three convoys of supplies for hospitals but we have
encountered some security problems. Our warehouse in Baghdad was first
hit by a missile and then looted."
In Basra, the US-British
coalition said almost a month ago that it would be days before the water
supply was restored. But, while the pumps are working, the pipes are
not.