Hospital
In Najaf Remains Closed
IRIN Report
15 July 2004
The Electronic Iraq
NAJAF --
Sadr Teaching Hospital in the southern city of Najaf has been closed
since early April, a victim of the fighting between Shi'ite cleric Moqtada
Sadr's Mehdi militia and US-led Coalition forces, according to local
people.
During a visit to
the area, IRIN managed to look inside the hospital to find a magnetic
resonance imaging, or MRI, diagnostic machine sitting damaged in one
wing, apparently too big for looters to steal. In the room next door,
wires and boxes of test kits lay tangled and strewn about.
Outside, hundreds
of rubbish bags filled with boxes of prescription medicines are piled
waist-deep on the asphalt. In one bag are hundreds of pink antibiotic
tablets from Jordan. In another are vials of what look like vaccination
ampoules from Germany.
While many of the
medicines seem to be undamaged, hospital guards say the bags were taken
out of the hospital after raw sewage flooded a basement storage area
and made the drugs unusable.
"Most of the
equipment was looted after the US troops left," Fadhel Karim, 26,
told IRIN as he stood outside the hospital waiting for the bus. "I
feel very sad about it. Any good citizen will refuse to allow this,
since this hospital serves patients from all of southern Iraq [an estimated
6 million people]."
"We are very
concerned about access to health care in the southern region as 16 operating
theatres have been closed in this hospital. It was a highly equipped
hospital and this is having a devastating effect," Dr Naeema Al-Gasseer,
head of the World Health Organization (WHO) Iraq office, told IRIN in
the Jordanian capital, Amman. She added that there was also the threat
of morbidity rates increasing due to a lack of access to emergency facilities.
"People are having to travel long distances to be treated and sometimes
they cannot get help in time," she stressed.
While there is disagreement
over why the hospital has been closed for so long, US troops, a Red
Cross representative, hospital guards and administrators agree on at
least one point about the closure. The Mehdi militia forces took over
the hospital in April, using its upper floors to launch attacks against
US-led troops and hold the main road.
Following fighting
on 9 April, US forces and others took over the hospital and locked doctors
into patients' rooms, according to Mohammed Juad, 27, a medical student
on the second year of his two-year programme. Six Mehdi militia fighters
died that day at the hospital, he said. The next morning, when they
were let out, the doctors and patients were told to leave, Juad said.
"They treated us like prisoners because they thought we were with
Sadr, but we were not," Juad told IRIN. "After we left, we
couldn't go back for three months."
Another public hospital
took in patients, as did two private clinics, Juad said. But closing
the 600-bed teaching hospital put a strain on health care services in
the region, he added, gesturing around the room at the smaller hospital
where he now works. A spokesman for US troops in Najaf agreed that the
hospital was still closed, saying workers were trying to get it ready
in time for the new school year in September.
But there, agreement
ends.
Hospital guards
said US and El Salvadoran troops wrecked the medical facility and stole
all of the equipment when they took it over. Major Rick Heyward, a US
military spokesman who works for a unit attached to the 1st Infantry
Division, told IRIN that US troops, or any other Coalition troops for
that matter, had no reason to steal from the Iraqis.
"I don't have
the exact details of what happened, but people realise the importance
of our mission here," Heyward told IRIN. "We wouldn't jeopardise
that by taking medical equipment."
The US military
recently gave US $10,000 worth of medical supplies to the hospital that
were donated from hospitals in the United States, said Capt Chip Payne,
who works in the same unit as Heyward. Those supplies are currently
in a warehouse for safe-keeping until the hospital re-opens.
Ahmed Khalid al-Rawi,
a spokesman for the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC)
in Iraq, said that the hospital's air-conditioning units, some beds
and medical equipment were all taken in looting immediately after troops
left. ICRC previously supplied some equipment to the hospital, he said.
Guards showed a
reporter piles of broken glass, papers strewn about and tree stumps
they said were all that was left of the former leafy entrance area following
fighting. Troops pulled out the ceiling tiles, looking for weapons,
Nabeel Ohahad, 32, a security guard, told IRIN, pointing up at the destroyed
ceiling and noting a bullet hole in a glass door.
Heyward said US
Marines and troops from El Salvador and Spain took the hospital back
from the Mehdi Army, but left around 1 July, handing it over to the
guards. "When the hospital was occupied by US troops, equipment
was damaged and machines were stolen," said Saad Hadi, 30, a hospital
guard who started his job 15 days ago. "Now, we're cleaning it
up with many workers."
Money from the US
Congress will pay for the hospital's long-term clean-up and renovation,
said Capt Lance O'Bryan, information officer with the same unit as Heyward
and Payne.
The US Project Management
Office, now called the Projects and Contracts Office, has allocated
$27 million to repair the hospital, O'Bryan said. The money will go
to the hospital through Iraq's Ministry of Health, he explained.
Iraq's new health
minister, Ala'adin Alwan, said the ministry was doing an assessment
at the hospital to decide how to spend the money. The health directorate
took over the hospital when troops moved out at the beginning of July,
Alwan said. "It's closed now because it was involved in the fighting,
but you can go to another hospital in Najaf," he told IRIN.
US-led troops, including
soldiers from El Salvador and Honduras in southern Iraq, are now in
an uneasy stand-off with the Mehdi militia, Heyward said. The Shi'ite
forces started fighting after US officials closed Sadr's office in Baghdad,
started to arrest his followers and announced they would kill or capture
him in connection with the assassination of rival religious leader Sheikh
Abdul Majid al-Khoe.
IRIN-CEA Tel: +254
2 622147 Fax: +254 2 622129 Email: [email protected].
This Item is Delivered
to the "Africa-English" Service of the UN's IRIN humanitarian
information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United
Nations. For further information, free subscriptions, or to change your
keywords, contact e-mail: [email protected] or Web: www.irinnews.org.
If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this item, please retain this
credit and disclaimer. Reposting by commercial sites requires written
IRIN permission.