by AlicetheCurious » Tue Oct 17, 2006 10:02 am
To think that before the first US invasion of Iraq, that country enjoyed one of the most prosperous, educated and healthy populations in the entire Middle East!!!<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>...Hospitals, their staff and patients have also come under attack from Coalition forces. In the US attack on Fallujah in 2004 the General Hospital was not the place to be for better health and security. Its services and those of clinics throughout the city were obstructed by US Marines with US snipers targeting medical facilities and ambulances.<br><br>Dr Ahmed told Dahr Jamail, "The Americans shot out the lights in the front of our hospital. They prevented doctors from reaching the emergency unit at the hospital, and we quickly began to run out of supplies and much needed medications."<br><br>Dr Rashid who worked in the Juamria Quarter of Fallujah told Dahr Jamail, that the major problem they faced was from US snipers. He told of an incident in which a sniper shot an ambulance driver in the leg. He survived, but a man who came to his rescue was shot and died on the operating table after Dr Rashid had tried to save his life. <br><br>Other hospitals throughout Iraq have reported similar incidents.<br><br>Doctors have also been targeted by death squads and US military at home and in the streets. In September 2005 in the al-Kudat district of Baghdad, a brain-surgeon, Basil Abbas Hassan was travelling to his hospital in the city centre. He drove out of a side street without noticing an American convoy approaching from behind. A US soldier shot him dead. Not many of his friends attended his funeral because so many had already fled from Iraq. (12).<br><br>Do the overworked doctors and medical staff have adequate funding and supplies?<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>DISAPPEARING MEDICAL FUNDS AND SUPPLIES</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>"<!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>Crimes against health have been committed for two years in my country, and no one knows about them</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END-->" <br><br>Dr Salam Ismael.<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Iraq's hospitals were once the envy of the Middle East. Wealthy businessmen used to fly their relatives in for everything from heart transplants to plastic surgery, and Iraqi specialists travelled the world lecturing about their research. But medical care deteriorated under twelve years of UN sanction, and war and occupation since 2003 have resulted in a further collapse.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>In April 2003, the US awarded Abt Associates Inc, a Massachusetts-based consulting firm, a $43 million contract to improve the Iraqi Ministry of Health and distribute medical supplies throughout the country. At the same time according to a USAID audit, 'medical kits intended for 600 clinics contained damaged or useless equipment.'<br><br>Deputy Minister of Health al-Saffar recently announced that of the 180 health clinics the US hoped to build by the end of December 2005, only four have been completed and none have opened.<br><br>Power supply is a major problem for most Iraqi hospitals. Ahlan Bari, the nurses manager at Yarmouk Teaching Hospital in Baghdad told Dahr Jamail on 8 April 2004, "We had a power outage while someone was undergoing surgery in the operating room, and he died on the table because we had no power for our instruments." Many hospitals do not have fully functioning backup generators because they lack funds to have them repaired. In many cases, spare parts are unavailable.<br><br>Al-Yarmouk, the largest emergency hospital in Baghdad, lacks medicines, disinfectants, surgical requirements, bed sheets, cleaning aids and personnel. A medical aid worker in Basra informed MEDACT that most hospitals there have limited - and in some cases no - supplies of IV fluids, IV cannulae, antibiotics and oxygen.<br><br>Chuwader General Hospital in Sadr City, one of two hospitals covering an area of nearly two million people, has a shortage of most supplies with the lack of potable water the major problem. Chief manager, Dr Qasim al-Nuwesri has said: "of course we have typhoid, cholera, kidney stones but we now even have the very rare Hepatitis Type-E and it has become common in our area". He added that they had not faced these problems before the invasion of 2003. <br><br>Dr Qasim al-Nuwesri also testified that his hospital was short of every medicine. "It is forbidden, but sometimes we have to reuse IV's, even the needles. We have no choice."<br><br>In or out of hospital the most vulnerable victims are the youngest.<br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>THE CHILDREN</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>Iraqi children, says UNICEF, are now dying faster under the Blair and Bush occupation than under Saddam Hussein.<br><br>The children of Iraq are caught up in war for the third time in 20 years. According to UNICEF almost half of the population is under the age of 18. Even before the most recent conflict began, many children were highly vulnerable to disease and malnutrition. One in four children under five years of age is chronically malnourished. One in eight children die before their fifth birthday. <br><br>According to Hayder Hussainy, senior official at the Iraqi Ministry of Health, approximately 50% of Iraqi children suffer from some form of malnourishment and one child in ten is suffering from chronic disease or illness. A UN study in 2005 found that a third of children in southern and central Iraq are malnourished. According to a 2004 Health Ministry study, 'easily treatable conditions such as diarrhoea and respiratory illness account for 70% of deaths among children'. <br><br>"The only things they (Iraqi children) have on their minds are guns, bullets, death and a fear of the US occupation." (Maruan Abdullah, Spokesman for the Association of Psychologists of Iraq.(API) Acccording to API , 'children in Iraq are seriously suffering psychologically with all the insecurity, especially with the fear of kidnappings and explosions.<br><br>The API surveyed over 1,000 children across Iraq and found that '92% of children examined were found to have learning impediments, largely attributable to the current climate of fear and insecurity.' <br><br>Marie Fernandez, a spokeswoman for Vienna-based aid agency Saving Children from War, said that the agency - which has been working with local doctors - has noted a lack of essential supplies, especially intravenous infusions and blood bags. "There's a lack of everything. Children are dying because of bleeding because there are no blood bags available," said Fernandez. "Antibiotics, Pentostam [an antimony compound used in the treatment of parasite infection], special milk for dehydrated children, and almost all medical material for emergency conditions aren't available." <br><br>In Baghdad, Ministry of Health officials say they are struggling to acquire the required medicines, but noted that their efforts were largely impeded by security issues and official corruption. "Because of security problems, it's difficult to have a complete picture of the problem," said senior ministry official Ahmed Saled.<br><br>At the Paediatric Teaching Hospital in the Iskan neighbourhood of Baghdad two or sometimes three children have been crammed into single beds. Sewage leaks onto the floors of the rooms where doctors perform surgery. And the lines to get prescriptions filled stretch outside the doors. Flies hover around beds that smell of wet bandages. And it is not uncommon for blood and other spillage to remain on the floors for hours because antiseptic cleaning supplies are not available. <br><br>In 'UK-controlled' Basra, "there are no official statistics about the number of children who have died since January," said Hassan Abdullah, a senior official in the Basra governorate. "But local health department employees and volunteers from some NGOs have collected information suggesting that in 2006 alone, about 90 children have died as a result of the lack of medicine." According to Abdullah, this is worse than the same period last year, when some 40 children died for similar reasons.<br><br>According to doctors at Basra's Maternity and Child Hospital about 40 children per day had been admitted to the hospital since May 2006, due to high temperatures resulting from poor water quality. "Children between the ages of one and three years are the most affected by problems of dehydration and pneumonia, meningitis, malnutrition and typhoid," said Marie Fenandez. "And some cholera cases have also been reported."<br><br>About 14 to 16 new cancer and leukaemia cases have also been reported among children each month. "It's painful to see so many children dying of cancer as a result of inadequate treatment," said Dr Ali Hashimy, an oncologist at the hospital. "If there was medicine, they would have been saved."<br><br>Specialists also note a disturbing increase of cases of Kala Azar among children, especially at the height of summer and under deteriorating sanitation conditions in Basra. Kala Azar is a potentially fatal disease transmitted by the sandfly parasite that preys on internal organs. "There are about 40 to 50 cases of Kala Azar per month in Basra's Maternity and Child hospital," said Fernandez. "Kala Azar can be completely cured if treated by Pentostam, but it can be fatal without treatment."<br><br>Pentostam has not been available in southern Iraq for several months--not even on the black market, where the drug had been available last year. But Pentosam would be unnecessary if it weren't for the garbage.<br><br>It has recently been reported that in Basra children who play in piles of rotting garbage throughout the city are increasingly suffering from typhoid fever as well as fungal and bacterial skin diseases. Up to 15 children per week come to the Children's Hospital of Basra with diseases related to their contact with accumulated garbage. Dr Hussein Ashayri, clinician at the Children's Hospital of Basra, reports, "some children even eat food found in the garbage, and others usually do not wash their hands after playing with it"<br><br>But the garbage may contain a weapon of mass destruction <br><br><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>DEPLETED URANIUM</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--><br><br>'DU is a crime against God and humanity. It has to be stopped.' <br><br>Major Doug Rokke (21)<br><br>There are accounts that US forces have used illegal weapons in Iraq with eyewitness reports from towns such as Fallujah claiming many people were killed by napalm combined with white phosphorous. This combines to become a sticky gel that burns at 300-350°C (572-662°F), causing fourth degree burnings. The chemicals react with the water in human cells. Clothes stay intact, but the affected skin burns to the bone. Since these chemicals react with water, the effect worsens when you pour water on it. The only means to stop the burning is by smothering it with mud. <br><br>Without 'independent' media reports from affected areas of Iraq it is difficult to find out the extent of such war crimes, but on one such crime the evidence is available and it is stark and shocking. This is the use of depleted uranium weapons which have an immediate and long-term affect on public health.<br><br>"DU will remain part of our arsenal for the foreseeable future because we have a duty to provide our troops with the best available equipment with which to protect themselves and succeed in conflict" Sec of State for Defence Geoff Hoon, March 2003<br><br>The BBC reported on 24 April 2003 that "The MoD could give no figure for the amount of DU used in Iraq: one unconfirmed estimate suggests the total could be about 1,500 tons, five times more than was used in the 1991 Gulf war. Two hundred tonnes of radioactive material were fired by invading US forces into buildings, homes, streets and gardens in Baghdad alone and it is believed much more has been used across the rest of the country. <br><br>Because of its hardness it is used as armour plating for tanks and 23 weapon systems are now suspected of using uranium warheads, including cruise missiles, bunker busting bombs, small smart bombs, and cluster bombs.<br><br>Depleted uranium (DU) is the waste product from the process of enriching uranium ore for use in nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors. Like other heavy metals such as lead, it is chemically toxic but it is also an alpha particle emitter with a radioactive -half-life of 4.5 billion years. In the words of The US Army Environmental Policy Institute: "DU is a low-level radioactive waste, and, therefore must be disposed of in a licensed repository. <br><br>DU is extremely dense, pyrophoric, cheap, available in huge quantities; and used in kinetic energy penetrators (rods of solid metal shot from guns). Kinetic energy penetrators do not explode but fragment and burn through armour due to the pyrophoric nature of uranium metal and the extreme flash temperatures generated on impact. When a DU shell hits a hard surface target, it burns at 10,000ºC. 30% of the shell fragments into shrapnel with the remaining 70% vaporising into three different and highly-toxic oxides, including uranium oxide. A target hit by a DU shell is left covered in black dust, whilst much of it remains suspended in the air and is subject to the whims of wind and weather. If this radioactive vapour is inhaled, it can mutate 35% of cells in surrounding tissue.<br><br>The impact of one 120mm DU shell fired from an American Abrams tank creates between 900 and 3,400 grams (roughly 2 to 7 pounds) of uranium oxide dust. 52 to 83% of those respirable size particles are insoluble in lung fluids.<br><br>Respirable size particles (less than 5 microns in diameter) are easily inhaled or ingested. Insoluble particles may remain in the lungs or other organs for years. The emission of predominantly Alpha as well as Beta and Gamma radiation from these particles and debris will persist for the life of the planet, not only in target areas but also wherever they are carried by winds. The particles can remain suspended in the earth's atmosphere for months and travel vast distances.<br><br>Internalised DU may cause kidney damage, cancers of the lung and bone, non-malignant respiratory disease, skin disorders, neurocognitive disorders, chromosomal damage, and birth defects, immune deficiency syndromes, rare kidney and bowel diseases. Children are born with genetic defects, moderate to severe deformities, rare illnesses and develop cancers very young. <br><br>"This (DU use as a 'weapon') has caused a health crisis that has affected almost a third of a million people (in Iraq)"(Dr Ahmad Hardan, scientific adviser to the World Health Organisation) He adds that women as young as 35 are developing breast cancer and sterility among men has increased tenfold.<br><br>Dr Hardan has stated that one of the worst affected areas is in Basra and surrounding area and that if the experience of Basra is played out in the rest of the country, Iraq is looking at an increase of more than 300% in all types of cancer over the next decade. In Basra every form of cancer has jumped up at least 10% with the exception of bone tumours and skin cancer, which have only risen 2.6% and 9.3% respectively. <br><br>Another tragic outcome is the delayed growth of children. Skeletal age comparisons between boys from southern Iraq and boys from Michigan show Iraqi males are 26 months behind in their development by the time they are 12-years-old and girls are almost half a year behind. "The effects of ionising radiation on growth and development are especially significant in the prenatal child", adds Dr Hardan. "Embryonic development is especially affected." <br><br>Three years after the invasion of Iraq it is very hard to estimate the exact situation because all barriers have been placed in the way of those who want to find out. "I arranged for a delegation from Japan's Hiroshima hospital to come and share their expertise in the radiological related diseases we are likely to face over time," says Dr Hardan. "The delegation told me the Americans had objected and they had decided not to come. "Similarly, a world famous German cancer specialist agreed to come, only to be told later that he would not be given permission to enter Iraq."<br><br>Reporting from Iraq in October 2002, Felicity Arbuthnot, visited the Al Mansour Children's Hospital in Baghdad and spoke to doctors there who told her that slow-motion nuclear weapons had been used on Iraq during the first Gulf War. Cases of child cancers and leukaemias seemed to have a common denominator; they all came from heavily bombarded areas.<br><br>Dr Ali, doctor in charge at the Al Mansour, estimated a fivefold rise in child cancers since the (first) Gulf War: 'though since we are not allowed the scientific facilities to implement a proper investigation and statistical survey, we have no proof.' He told Felicity that between 1978 and 1992 there were two hundred and seventy cancer and leukaemia cases recorded at the Al Mansour. Between November 1992 and 2002 the hospital had recorded 1,714 cases.<br><br>The American and British occupation forces are responsible for:<br><br>* Forbidding any release of statistics related to civilian casualties from use of DU weapons both before and after the war and occupation <br><br>* Refusal to clean up contaminated areas <br><br>* Depriving international agencies and Iraqi researchers the right to conduct full (DU) related exploration programs by US/ UK occupation forces<br><br>These acts are breaches of the Geneva Conventions and represent crimes against humanity because these weapons are causing incalculable harm and suffering to civilians in all contaminated areas.<br><br><br>CONCLUSION<br><br>Tony Blair resisted Clare Short's call (when Secretary of State for International Development) for the United Nations and the Red Crescent to take over civil and humanitarian aid in post-war Iraq. He had already surrendered this role to the Pentagon, the CPA and the Bechtel's and Halliburton's. With the disbandment of the Iraqi Baath administration in contravention of the 1907 Hague Convention, the situation was set up for chaos and corruption.<br><br>....<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/wilson10162006.html">www.counterpunch.org/wilson10162006.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--><br> <p></p><i></i>