The Destruction Of Iraqi Healthcare Infrastructure
CounterCurrents.org, India 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. ” title=”http://urrents.org/wise310507.htm\”>” target=”_blank”>urrents.org/wise310507.htm”>[more]