Iraqi
Doctors Out On A Limb
By Dahr Jamail in
Damascus
02 May, 2007
Al-Jazeera
English
Dr
Omar al-Khattab fled Iraq just over a year ago after receiving death
threats.
At that time, he was working
at Balad General Hospital, 50km north of Baghdad.
"I had to leave my home,
my work and my salary so now I'm living here jobless and am just barely
surviving," he said during an interview inside an almost bare apartment
in the Al-Qudsiya suburb of Damascus.
"In my hospital alone,
of five surgeons only one remains. We were three orthopaedics but now
there are none, and only 25 per cent of the resident doctors remain."
According to the Iraqi Ministry
of Health and UN statistics, Khattab is one of 18,000 Iraqi doctors
and health care professionals who have fled the war-torn country since
the US-led invasion began in March 2003.
In 2003, there were 34,000
registered health care workers in Iraq.
Death threats
Al-Khattab said: "I
know at least 10 other Iraqi doctors just here in Al-Qudsiya who have
left because of death threats or the overall security situation."
A general practitioner who
was a resident in the surgical department at his hospital, al-Khattab
is now living off his meagre savings and unable to return to his country.
He fills his days by offering
his services to other Iraqi refugees who cannot afford health care in
Syria. It is also how he maintains his expertise while assisting some
of what he estimates to be 50,000 Iraqis in his neighbourhood.
One of his patients is a
64-year-old Iraqi woman with type-2 diabetes, a hernia, a broken arm
and an infected abscess in her right leg. The former primary school
teacher broke her arm while running in panic during a mortar attack
near her home in the Mansour district of Baghdad during February 2004.
Right now, al-Khattab is
most concerned about the abscess which resulted from a wound when the
woman, who asked to remain unidentified because of security fears, fell
on a bus while going to Lebanon recently.
Iraqis in need
Dr Ahmed Shibad, 30, also
left his medical practice at Baquba General Hospital for the security
of Damascus.
Since he has arrived in Syria
in March 2007, he still doesn't know about as many Iraqis in need as
al-Khattab does, but is doing what he can.
He said: "I've helped
on a case of an Iraqi here who needed help, free of charge of course.
If anyone asks me, I'll help them immediately."
And there probably are many
Iraqis in need of free medical care.
Last month, Damascus called
for international aid to manage the nearly 40,000 Iraqis entering Syria
every month. The UN estimates that there are some one million Iraqis
in the country.
So far, Syrian authorities
have maintained an "open door" policy and have welcomed the
Iraqis as "guests", but they are prohibited from procuring
gainful employment.
Plight of doctors
Another Iraqi doctor in Damascus
fled Baghdad in February 2006. He asked to be referred to as "Dr
X" because "this indicates the plight of all Iraqi doctors
today".
He told Al Jazeera that doctors
are targeted in Iraq because they treat people who are sometimes fighters,
militia men, or security personnel. Treating one group may anger another.
"Dr X" said: "We
receive dead bodies, blood, and innocent people, and sometimes people
who are killers.
"I remember I was sitting
in my room in the outpatient clinic at my hospital south of Baghdad
when all of a sudden two men arrived with machine guns looking for someone.
They went into the patients ward and shot a man dead."
Soon after, militia members
threatened him with a verbal warning, and decided to move to a hospital
within the capital.
Dangerous name
A few weeks later, as the
fighting in and around Baghdad intensified, a nurse told him that he
would have to leave - because his name could get him killed.
He first fled to Jordan,
but after six months of no work found it too expensive, and opted for
Syria where he joined the rest of his family.
Although "Dr X"
came to Syria because he had hoped to resume working in his specialised
field, a series of bureaucratic entanglements has kept him without work.
"First you need all
these IDs and extra qualification tests. But they have placed many restrictions
like certificates from different departments in Baghdad, which are so
hard to get. They each cost around $600 to get in Iraq so it's nearly
impossible to work here.
"I am unemployed and
homeless."
Treating relatives
Yet "Dr X" too
is doing his best to help Iraqi refugees in Damascus and says many of
his colleagues have found ways to keep practising their expertise by
treating relatives, friends and other Iraqis in their neighbourhoods.
He said: "We had good
training in Iraq, and the people here trust you so you can treat them
and practice your work, and deal with your relatives."
But Shibad and Khattab fear
that soon they will have to leave Syria for countries where they will
be able to gain wages.
Khattab is worried how long
his savings will hold out, and is frustrated by his fruitless job search
thus far.
He said: "I have applied
through many websites, I have applied for work in the Gulf and the Kingdom
of Saudi Arabia specifically but they said they don't give visas to
Iraqis.
"We have a very dark
future. We don't know what is going to happen."
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