Struggling To Survive
By Dahr Jamail
23 June, 2004
The New Standard
I revisited Chuwader General Hospital in Sadr City yesterday. Unlike at Yarmouk Hospital, the manager at Chuwader was very open about the desperate plight facing his hospital, where 78 doctors work with desperate medicine and equipment shortages to serve an average of 3,000 daily visitors.
I was taken on a tour where I saw the kitchen facilities in complete disrepair, toilets which overflowed across the floor in the intensive care wing, X-Ray equipment dated from the 1970s and beds lined up with patients in one of the dirty lobbies.
It was clear that not only does this hospital need immediate rehabilitation and re-supplying, but an entirely new hospital is required in the impoverished Sadr City to even begin to meet the needs of the 1.2 million desperate residents of this sprawling area, which experiences fighting between the Mehdi Army and the occupation forces on a near daily basis.
This is a hospital that can spend only $200 per day to feed its 308 in-patients. This is a hospital that is regularly invaded by US troops who, according to several of the doctors, walk straight into wards looking for fighters without consulting the doctors first.
Also here, an Iraqi subcontractor visited (and billed) to “repair” a malfunctioning X-Ray machine 6 times in a 30 day period last July/August. The machine remains in disrepair today.
As the tour continued, I had a gut level reaction of just needing to leave. I told Abu Talat: “This is enough. I have seen enough. We can go now.”
He put his hand on my shoulder and gently said: “We’re almost finished. I know you are tired, but let’s finish this.”
We were taken to see premature babies, kept two per incubator in a small maternity ward where fatigued nurses constantly monitored their fragile condition. My friend Tarek and I were allowed inside the room to see the babies -- their tiny bodies breathing rapidly while they struggled to survive.
Shortly after this we shook hands with Dr. Khaim Jabbar for and thanked him for showing us around, and walked out into the blazing heat and filth of Sadr City. After stepping over streams of raw sewage running under the stalls of the food vendors outside we got into the car and slowly made our way out of the slum that so many Baghdad residents call home.
I looked out the window at the grimy children playing in the garbage on which goats were feeding and considered that if those premature babies did, by chance, survive -- this would most likely be their life.
Tears welled up as I felt a deep despair. “My God what can be done about this? What is the point of all this work when nothing seems to be changing here?” I asked, more to the people I gazed upon, rather than to Tarek or Abu Talat. They were both quick to reassure me that we can’t stop this work we do, that it is worthy and needed while I wiped my tears.
Abu Talat softly said, “I think it is because you know you are leaving soon also.” He knows me better than I know myself sometimes. And he was right.
Later that evening, with yet another instance of perfect timing, my editor forwarded me a long list of comments from various readers who expressed support for the reporting I’ve been doing here for 11 weeks now. I want to thank you very much for taking the time to write these. Those comments have never failed to arrive at the perfect time when I’ve needed the support most.
It is easy to get tunnel vision here -- focusing day after day on the dire situation this occupation has created in Iraq. Easy to forget that people are actually reading about the stories, and are working hard in several countries for change. Change that Iraqis need so desperately.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Dahr Jamail is Baghdad correspondent for The NewStandard. He is an Alaskan devoted to covering the untold stories from occupied Iraq. You can help Dahr continue his crucial work in Iraq by making donations. For more information or to donate to Dahr, visit The NewStandard.
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