Cholera Threat In Basra
By Ewen MacAskill in Baghdad
The Guardian
10 May , 2003Conditions 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.