The
Destruction Of Iraqi Healthcare Infrastructure
By Adil Shamoo
01 June, 2007
Fpif.org
Ten
thousand doctors have fled the country. Two thousand have been killed.
Some hospitals lack the rudimentary elements of care: hygiene, clean
water, antibiotics, anesthetics and other basic drugs. Oxygen, gauze,
rubber gloves, and diagnostic instruments such as X-rays are absent
or rarely evident. This is Iraq today.
Before Iraq suffered through
an embargo and two wars with the United States starting in 1990, its
healthcare system was considered one of the best in the Middle East.
Iraq had well-trained physicians and modern facilities. Today, the healthcare
system barely exists at all, with few healthcare workers and hospitals
that are battlegrounds.
According to Save the Children,
an independent non-profit humanitarian organization, in 2005, 122,000
Iraqi children died before they reached their fifth birthday. Since
1990, there has been a 150 percent increase in the mortality rate for
Iraqi children. The under-5 mortality rate per one thousand live births
in Iraq is 125; in Egypt it is just 33. Iraq’s record in children’s
healthcare now ranks in the bottom three countries in the world.
With the current conditions of Iraq at war, the death statistics continue
to spiral upward. The diseases of the developing world are affecting
Iraq’s children – pneumonia and diarrhea. Malnutrition is
wreaking havoc with the growth of Iraq’s next generation. The
London Guardian reports that in addition to these many physical traumas,
millions of Iraqi children have been psychologically traumatized by
the war.
The body count estimates
of Iraqi deaths are often cited to be over one hundred thousand. From
this number one can estimate that the number of injured and disabled
Iraqis must be in the hundreds of thousands. While there are no definitive
data on Iraqi adult patients seeking medical help, one recent report
from the Washington Post notes that the thousands of injured Iraqi security
forces have no place to go for immediate treatment and no long term
rehabilitation for their loss of limbs or other physical injuries. This
lack of treatment for Iraqi patients is surpassed only by the lack of
psychiatric and psychological treatment. Compounded by the inherent
societal stigma associated with mental illness (which is prevalent even
in developed countries such as ours), these Iraqis endure suffering
beyond our western comprehension of the recovering soldier or child.
Nearly one billion dollars
has been allotted for healthcare reconstruction. While that seems like
a sum large enough to fix the problems, no one really knows where that
money has gone. The healthcare infrastructure in general is crumbling.
Ordering anything for healthcare facilities takes months upon months.
Hospital buildings remain in disrepair. The inflow of new doctors is
down to a trickle. Many teaching hospitals are not functioning for lack
of teaching physicians. Most of these faculties of the medical school
have fled the country for fear for their lives. This is compounded by
the fact that many medical students either are leaving the country or
changing their course of study to other fields.
What is even worse and inhumane
is that patients in hospitals are not safe – they are potential
hostages for kidnapping and murder. As a result, many injured Iraqis
do not seek hospitalization for either fear from insurgents or sometimes
arrest by Iraqi or U.S. forces. No one respects the sanctity of hospitals
in violation of the Geneva Convention.
International law places
the burden of maintaining order, safety, and well-being of an occupied
nation on the shoulders of the occupying power. Our political and military
leaders estimate the number of our soldiers that will die or be injured
due to an invasion. However, an additional element our leaders need
to consider is the well-being of the nation we conquer. The human suffering
of the invaded nation is detriment to our moral standing in the world.
Adil E. Shamoo born and raised in Baghdad is a professor
at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and is a contributor
to Foreign Policy In Focus. He writes on ethics and public policy and
can be reached at: [email protected].
Leave
A Comment
&
Share Your Insights
Comment
Policy
Digg
it! And spread the word!
Here is a unique chance to help this article to be read by thousands
of people more. You just Digg it, and it will appear in the home page
of Digg.com and thousands more will read it. Digg is nothing but an
vote, the article with most votes will go to the top of the page. So,
as you read just give a digg and help thousands more to read this article.