Iraqi Medical System Wrecked By War

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Iraqi medical system wrecked by war

LORI HINNANT

Associated Press Writer

Mon Feb 18, 5:41 PM ET

 

 

Already a troubled system, Iraqi medical care has fallen to the brink

of collapse since the U.S.-led invasion five years ago. Scores of

doctors have been slain, cancer patients have to hunt down their own

drugs — even IV fluid is in short supply. On Tuesday, a former deputy

health minister and the head of the ministry's security force will

stand trial, a year after they were accused of letting Shiite death

squads use ambulances and government hospitals to carry out

kidnappings and killings.

 

Specialists are hard to find. At one point, Baghdad — a city of more

than 5 million — had no neurosurgeon, said Dr. Hussein al-Hilli,

director of the Ibn Albitar Hospital in Baghdad.

 

" This was something that was horrible because we had many head

injuries, many spinal injuries, " al-Hilli said. He described " big

shortages of drugs, big shortages of everything " — including IV

fluid. " This simple thing, we don't have. "

 

Like so many areas of life in Iraq, the health care crisis is vast

and complex, and there is no quick solution to improve conditions for

doctors and patients.

 

According to figures from the Iraqi Health Ministry released earlier

this year, 618 medical employees, including 132 doctors, as well as

medics and other health care workers, have been killed nationwide

since 2003, among the professionals from many fields caught up in

Iraq's sectarian violence.

 

Hundreds, possibly thousands, of other medical personnel are believed

to have fled to Iraq's northern semiautonomous Kurdistan region and

neighboring countries.

 

Even with the security gains of the past several months across Iraq,

it is still dangerous for doctors and their families if they dare

step out of heavily guarded hospital compounds.

 

Drugs supplies are so low that Iraqis hospitalized for illnesses as

serious as cancer are asked to track down their own medicine.

 

" When we need medicine, we go directly to private pharmacies, " said

Ahmed Khalil, the 38-year-old owner of an auto repair shop in

Fallujah. " We know we're not going to get any from Fallujah hospital. "

 

And when pharmacy shelves are bare, Iraqis turn to the black market.

 

" Before the invasion, we got our share of medicine through government-

owned medicine depots, " said a Baghdad pharmacist, who spoke about on

condition of anonymity because he feared reprisal. He said hospitals

and clinics get some drugs from the medical depots, but it's rarely

enough for the number of people in need.

 

" Sometimes we get medicine stolen by employees who work at the depots

or at hospitals, " he said.

 

At worst, the black-market drugs are dubious knockoffs, according to

patients, doctors and pharmacists alike.

 

The war has taken a special toll on hospitals.

 

Fallujah, site of one of the deadliest battles between U.S. troops

and militants west of Baghdad, is slowly rebuilding as violence ebbs,

but memories of the danger are acute at the city's main hospital.

 

" Doctors would concentrate most of the time on treating people

wounded in U.S. bombings or clashes between insurgents and U.S.

forces. Other patients got little attention, " said one doctor at the

hospital, who also declined to be identified because he also feared

for his safety. " We were beaten by gunmen if we failed to save their

wounded fellows. "

 

Jassim Naseef, 52, took his pregnant wife to a private clinic three

months ago, paying 20 times what the public hospital would have

charged for the birth of their son: $247 compared with $12. The

hospital wards, he complained, were dirty and lacked electricity.

 

" I chose the expensive private clinic in order to ensure that my wife

and my son got the best medical care, " he said.

 

The American military and non-governmental organizations such as the

Iraqi Red Crescent do a great deal to help, al-Hilli and others said,

by bringing in supplies and advisers and helping train medical staff

still versed in 1970s-style medicine.

 

Al-Hilli also has been buoyed by the Iraqi government announcing a

plan to build more hospitals. He said no new hospitals had been built

since 1986, at the height of the Iran-Iraq war, more than two decades

ago.

 

Yet there are still major problems. Iraq's Health Ministry has been

in almost constant flux since the war started. Each minister has

stayed " eight months or seven months or 11 months, " al-Hilli said.

 

Then, there are the arrests of former Deputy Health Minister Hakim al-

Zamili and Brig. Gen. Hameed al-Shimmari, who was in charge of the

ministry's security force. Soldiers stormed their offices last

February in separate raids.

 

U.S. officials had been complaining that radical Shiite cleric

Muqtada al-Sadr's followers were transforming hospitals into bases

for his Mahdi militia and — were diverting medicine from state

clinics to health care facilities run by the cleric's movement.

 

The clinics helped al-Sadr build a powerful nationwide political

movement modeled in part on the Shiite Hezbollah militia in Lebanon.

 

There was another ominous development earlier this month, when the

acting head of al-Rashad psychiatric hospital was arrested by the

U.S. military in connection with the possible exploitation of

mentally impaired women by al-Qaida in Iraq, presumably the suicide

bombers who destroyed two pet markets in Baghdad and killed nearly

100 people.

 

The U.S. military wouldn't speculate on a motive but noted at the

time of the arrest that al-Qaida often uses threats or extortion to

get what it wants, which could possibly put the death of the former

director, Dr. Ibrahim Mohammed Ajil, in a slightly different light.

 

He was gunned down on his way home from work in December.

 

 

Associated Press writers Sameer N. Yacoub and Sinan Salaheddin

contributed to this report.

 

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