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Suffer the Children
Number of children dying higher than when the country was under
sanctions.
By Hind al-Safar in Baghdad
11/16/07 "ICR" No. 237, 16-Nov-07
-- Child mortality in Iraq has spiralled because of the tense
security situation, deteriorating health services and lack of
medical supplies, say experts.
According to a report released in May 2007 by aid agency Save
the Children, “Iraq’s child mortality rate has increased by a
staggering 150 per cent since 1990, more than any other
country.”
The report, entitled State of the World’s Mothers 2007, said
that some 122,000 Iraqi children - the equivalent of one in
eight - died in 2005, before reaching their fifth birthday. More
than half of the deaths were among newborn babies in their first
month of life.
“Even before the latest war, Iraqi mothers and children were
facing a grave humanitarian crisis caused by years of
repression, conflict and external sanctions,” said the report.
“Since 2003, electricity shortages, insufficient clean water,
deteriorating health services and soaring inflation have
worsened already difficult living conditions.”
The study listed pneumonia and diarrhoea as major killers of
children in Iraq, together accounting for over 30 per cent of
child deaths.
“Conservative estimates place increases in infant mortality
following the 2003 invasion of Iraq at 37 per cent,” it said.
In the capital of Baghdad, there are four paediatric hospitals
and three gynaecological hospitals, as well as individual
children’s wards in other medical institutions.
The city’s central paediatric hospital is in the capital’s Islam
neighbourhood - a volatile area which is hard for families and
medical staff to reach.
The hospitals fall short in providing quality care because they
do not have enough medical supplies or staff - who, in many
cases, have fled to other countries.
Experts draw parallels between the dire state of Iraq’s health
care system today and the way it was when the country was under
sanctions during the 1990s, when there was a similar limited
supply of drugs and other medical resources.
The UN Security Council imposed economic sanctions against Iraq
in 1990, following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and these
continued until 2003.
In 2000, the UN children’s agency UNICEF published a survey
which showed the mortality rate among Iraqi children under five
had more than doubled in the government-controlled south and
centre of Iraq during the sanctions.
At the time, Anupama Rao Singh, a senior UNICEF official, said
in an interview with Reuters that around half a million children
under the age of five had died in Iraq since the international
embargo was imposed.
“In absolute terms, we estimate that perhaps about half a
million children under five years of age have died, who
ordinarily would not have died had the decline in mortality that
was prevalent over the 70s and the 80s continued through the
90s,” she said.
Mohammed Zahraw, a paediatrician with the ministry of health’s
inspector-general’s office, said that similar threats to
children’s health exist today – and that these are compounded by
the lack of security which now prevails in Iraq.
"In the past [infant deaths] were caused by the economic
sanctions and the lack of medicine and medical supplies. The
same problem exists now, in addition to the deteriorating
security situation. This is particularly true in Baghdad, where
it’s difficult to access hospitals," he said.
Fahima Salman, the head of the inspector-general’s monitoring
force, said the primary reason for high infant mortality in Iraq
is a lack of drugs and medical supplies.
The inspector-general’s office at the health ministry is tasked
with inspecting hospitals and reports back to the ministry on
the sanitation, performances and needs of health facilities.
Salman said that poor security and a lack of transport meant
that it was hard to transfer drugs and supplies to hospitals and
clinics. This means that families of patients usually buy basic
medicine, such as antibiotics and hydrocortisone, on the black
market and bring the medicine to the hospital or clinic.
"We, as the inspector general's office, visit health facilities
to determine the level of shortages and note the difficulties,”
said Salman. “We try to provide what we can…but we still face
major challenges."
Sometimes, drug deliveries fail to reach the ministry of
health’s warehouses, and go missing en route.
Amal Abdul-Amir, a paediatrician at the Yarmook Teaching
Hospital in Baghdad’s Karkh area, said that infants were also
dying because paediatricians and gynaecologists had fled the
country in droves, resulting in a lack of skilled staff.
“People are turning to midwives who do not necessarily have
experience with births or emergency cases,” she explained. “This
is causing the number of infant mortalities to rise."
In hospitals throughout the country, it is not uncommon to hear
the wails of grieving mothers, such as 30-year-old Zaineb
Mohammed, whose two-month-old baby died after she failed to get
him to hospital in time.
She told IWPR that en route to the hospital in the impoverished
Baghdad suburb of Sadr City, her family was repeatedly stopped
at roadblocks and checkpoints erected to combat security
problems there.
The delays caused the child’s condition to worsen and when they
finally arrived there weren’t paediatric specialists to treat
her.
Mohammed has vowed not to have another child. "I don’t think
that I can bear to lose another baby to the poor health and
public services in Iraq," she said.
Hind al-Safar is an IWPR contributor in Baghdad.
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