Let's just agree to disagree.
Nadia,
No one could justify the US shirking these responsibilities. I think the only excuses being made is that the job of re-construction and humanitarian relief could not happen during the military campaign. Now that the organized resistance over, I will be as demanding as you that the humanitarian concerns be addressed. The immediate post-Saddam era is now, not when the statue fell and people starting looting.
I'm not disagreeing that there are major humanitarian concerns in Iraq.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Seminole: *
Nadia,
No one could justify the US shirking these responsibilities. I think the only excuses being made is that the job of re-construction and humanitarian relief could not happen during the military campaign. Now that the organized resistance over, I will be as demanding as you that the humanitarian concerns be addressed. The immediate post-Saddam era is now, not when the statue fell and people starting looting.
[/QUOTE]
You make sense Seminole.
Alright, thank you.
This article states: Since the third day of the war, [Nasiriya’s] electricity supply has been out of action. Third day of the war would be - 23 March ? And today is 25 April. More than one month without access to electricity. Maybe George and Laura Bush and their daughters would like to try surviving just 60 minutes in the Arab heat without air conditioning, and warm water to drink.
Not a drop that’s safe to drink, Jonathan Duffy
BBC, 23 April 2003
War-ravaged Nasiriya is caught in a deadly cycle: with no electricity to pump water, locals are breaking into the underground pipes, allowing raw sewage to seep into the system. The danger of a cholera outbreak is a real one.
Eight-month-old Ali Hussein is too young to know anything about the war, but he is feeling the effects now, in his stomach.
For the past week, Ali has suffered from vomiting and diarrhoea, leaving him badly dehydrated. Now doctors have prescribed him a simple antibiotic and his mother, Zahra, hopes he will soon be on the mend. For Ali has been diagnosed with gastroenteritis, cases of which have risen sharply in Nasiriya in recent days.
Since the third day of the war, the city’s electricity supply has been out of action. The combination of bombing raids by the coalition forces and the counterattack by the Iraqi army destroyed Nasiriya’s infrastructure.
Without power there is nothing to pump the water. And without running water, the locals are turning to untreated supplies which they can’t afford to boil because of the soaring price of fuel.
The electricity shutdown has also brought the sewage pumps to a halt, so that much of this city of half a million people is sitting on a bed of stale human waste. In places it has started to seep up to ground level.
Outside the clinic where Ali had been taken for treatment, the sewage has settled into a pool which runs the length of the dusty street before spreading out over a traffic junction. It’s hard to sidestep and impossible to avoid getting a sniff of it.
The big fear is the two problems will combine into a single, lethal one. Across the city, locals desperate to tap into a ready water source have split open the municipal pipes.
Now sewage is seeping through the punctured holes of those pipes, so that even when the electricity is restarted, and water begins to flow freely again, it will carry potentially deadly bacteria.
With temperatures rising as summer approaches, Nasiriya could find a cholera epidemic on its hands, says one highly experienced aid worker.
Clean water, or the lack of it, is more of a problem than anything else in Nasiriya. There is no shortage of food. The central distribution system set up under the Oil for Food programme ensured everyone here had enough rations to last them through to August.
In some medical practices, 80% of patients seen are suffering from some sort of water infection. Dr Abdul Al-Shadood says his Al-Meelad clinic is seeing an average of 22 gastroenteritis cases a day, compared to one or two before the war.
“If this is not diagnosed and treated quickly in children, they will die,” says the doctor. That has already started to happen. The doctor refers severe cases to the city’s children’s hospital - itself working at only half capacity after a stray missile attack - and says the illness has claimed young lives.
Another worry is the lack of medicine available to treat these relatively simple maladies. The central medicine store that used to serve all medical practices in the area was seized by the Iraqi army as a battlement and subsequently wiped out in bombing raids.
Dr Shadood’s clinic has run out of the most basic treatment - oral rehydration solution. Instead, he is prescribing an antibiotic called Flagyl. But he has only a few days’ stock left and no deliveries are scheduled.
Again there are complications. Like many western countries, Iraq’s fondness for handing out simple antibiotics to treat sickness has raised resistance among many locals.
Only now are humanitarian relief agencies starting to get a handle on what help they can offer. The Irish humanitarian agency Goal arrived in Nasiriya last week and is one of only a small group of aid organisations here.
Field worker Mary McLoughlin says it’s “no exaggeration” that if the water and sewage situation is not mended soon, Nasiriya will see a “major humanitarian crisis”.
“Cholera is endemic in southern Iraq, but we are in grave danger of a cholera epidemic by the summer. That will sweep through the population and kill thousands,” she says.
"The water and sewage pipes were already crumbling before the war, because of years of neglect. But now people are breaking holes in them to get the water, the real danger is of cross contamination between sewage and water.
“It’s such a massive construction task to repair the years of neglect, I doubt whether they can fix the pipes by the time the really high temperatures come, which is when cholera becomes a real fear.”
Iraq’s cancer children overlooked in war, Jonathan Duffy
BBC, 29 April 2003
Nadia,
Our job to bring em bottle water until the water in Iraq is safe to drink. Our obligation to donate monies for bottled water for those suffering people and our job to make sure they get it.
Its our job to do what we can, whatever we can do to help. Doesn't matter if you donate 15 cents or 15 milllion. Point being that these people need our help. They need our help in so many ways. Not just for food and water. They need faith also. They need hope. The kids do and so do their parents and grandparents.
I think about them often. Wonder what life would be like if I lived there. I put myself in their shoes and know I would never be able to live up to their strength, ever. A strength God gives them. I know he is with them.
God may not be able to control what people do. He can't. He gave us choice, but he is there with those people every day and every night. Somewhere we all belong if we want to do good for each other.
AAG, That’s the beauty of this whole issue isn’t it - that you and i possess the luxury of debating this issue until the proverbial cows come home.
Not certain how accurate this is - if anyone has a more authoritative link, please post it.
Iraq in danger of starvation, says UN, Helena Smith, Nicosia and Ed Vulliamy
11 May 2003, The Observer
Birth pangs: as a new era dawns in Baghdad, life goes on - sometimes, just barely
Richard Leiby, Washington Post, 5 May 2003
Civilian deaths: the bombs that keep On killing, Michael Weisskopf, TIME, 3 May 2003
Cholera outbreak feared in Iraq, BBC, 7 May 2003
UN officials back in Baghdad to manage aid effort, Nadim Ladki, Sydney Morning Herald, 3 May 2003
Its a humanitarian disaster: UN envoy, DAWN, 11 May 2003
Children of Sadr City bear brunt of crisis made worse by war, 2 May 2003
Six months on and the Humanitarian disaster has still not ended for millions of iraqi civilians. The water treatment plants are still not fully operationable, there are still power blackouts, medical services are non-existant in many areas, thousands of people are living below poverty levels, many are suffering from malnutrition, some are dying from starvation. The Iraqi economy has shrunk even further, Inflation is running at record levels and yes the Bush Adminstration has bought something in which wasn't that common before.. a huge crime wave.
Iraq’s Economy Declines by Half
“And more than half the population remains dependent on government food aid, which costs the country $2bn each year, to prevent malnutrition and starvation.” – The economy is shrinking at an alarming rate and the law and order situation is a nightmare.. its not surprising millions are questioning what has been achieved by Bush’s illegal war and subsequent occupation of Iraq.
Iraq’s Economy Declines by Half](BBC NEWS | Business | Iraq's economy declines by half) BBC News 10 Oct 03
The scale of the task facing the United States and the international community in Iraq has been highlighted by the first detailed figures since the conflict ended on the state of the Arab country’s economy. Iraq’s economy will shrink 22% this year, having fallen 21% in 2002 and 12% in 2001, the United Nations and the World Bank have estimated. The figures, which have been published ahead of a major meeting of donor nations, suggest that reconstruction work in Iraq will be slower to take effect than originally hoped.
Average income in Iraq fell from $3,600 per person in 1980 to between $770 and $1,020 by 2001 and will be just $450-610 by the end of 2003, the UN and World Bank said. Even by the end of 2004, the two organisations estimate that average income could be lower than in 2001. Plans to restore oil and gas production, refining, and pipeline capacity remain unclear
World Bank
The figures are contained in the latest version of the World Bank’s Joint Iraq Needs Assessment which is to be presented to international donors on 23 October. The wide range of estimates reflects the uncertainty over the effects of the war and international sanctions, and the lack of records in Baghdad.
Mass unemployment
The biggest problem facing the Iraqi economy is mass unemployment, with an estimated 50% of the population either unemployed or under-employed. The government employs 30% of the workforce, and many of those work for the inefficient state-owned enterprises, who employ 500,000 (with an additional one million working directly for the government) But the World Bank warns against immediate action in closing down the 192 state enterprises, and says they should be kept going to “preserve employment and social stability” before being prepared for possible privatisation in four or five years time. …
No kidding, it's as if there was a war that overthrow a brutal dictatorship that had led the country for decades.
Well is it a surprise?
Not only has the widely praised (by extremist American's that is) "shock and awe" operations led to the slaughter of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians and Iraqi soldiers, it has systematically destroyed Iraqi infrastrcture, and it's economy. That $16 billion they have promised to spend in Iraq over the coming years (after causing hundreds of billions of damage in the first place) will no doubt only be spent on paying off it's dwindling number of stooges, and protecting oil pipelines (those that are running these days). The ordinary Iraqi people will see no impovement at all in their economic well being, and that is indicated by the rapidly rising resistance to the US occupiers.
Utd, the US forces all but destroyed the existing civilian infrastructures during the invasion and now are struggling to bring some form of normality to the cities. They have failed miserably to provide hospital services to Iraqi civilians, they have failed miserably to repair the electricity generator plants so that there are no constant blackouts, they have failed miserably to bring jobs or to revitalise industries hence the economy is in shambles and 50% of the Iraqi population now relies on handouts from the UN and NGO's. Overall the US occupation of Iraq is a total failure for the Bush Adminstration.
*The wards are filthy, the sanitation shocking, the infections lethal. Sewage drips from the roof above cots of premature babies. This is the state of Baghdad’s top children’s hospital, 10 months after the fall of Saddam, reveals Justin Huggler * :disgust:
Dying of neglect: the state of Iraq’s children’s hospitals](http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=493560) Indepdant 21 Feb 04
Toward the top of the article:
"This is the reality of life in Iraq under American occupation. "
Later in the article:
"Al-Iskan used to be called Saddam Hussein Central Children's Hospital. It was supposed to be the premier children's hospital for all of Iraq, but the staff say it was never any better than it is now.
The Americans inherited an Iraqi health system in a nightmarish state, the product of a combination of years of crippling sanctions imposed by the West, and criminal neglect by the Saddam regime.
But the Americans have had 10 months to improve things, and at Al-Iskan children are still dying because of the dire conditions."
Comment:
What can I say. Moronic insinuations through headlines. Hopefully, the children with cancer will get more advanced treatments in what could be a more peaceful and prosperous future for Iraq. Probably doesn't matter to American eye-pokers, though. So long as America gets tarred, innocent suffering is inconsequential.
Some shocking realities exposed in this articles, namely:-
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Of the billions of dollars the US is spending in Iraq, little seems to have found its way to Al-Iskan.
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Iraq has a high incidence of leukaemia in children and it is rising. That has been blamed on the use of depleted uranium by the US in the first Gulf War, and many of the cases at Al-Iskan came from areas that suffered heavy bombardment in 1991.
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The problem is that there is no effort on the part of the coalition provisional authority to think about a long-term public health policy,"
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***“We are waiting for the Americans to do what they said they would,” she says. “They made so many promises, such a long list. We are waiting for them to keep those promises.” ***
So many promises to the Iraqi people broken…
Well stated! The neo-cons policies have been a humanitarian disaster for thousands of Iraqi children, yet they will stop at nothing to propogate lies/stories about post-war Iraq being a better place. They ignore the fact that the Health service was crippled by the draconian sanctions policy masterminded by the Bush senior administration. The situation has only been made worse by Bush’s illegal war and subsequent occupation of Iraq. 
What the Bush Administration will never tell you!!
Iraqi hospitals have been chronically short of medicines since the overthrow of the Baathist government, and what medicines are available have massively increased in price. According to a January 22 IRIN report, it is not unusual for patients to have to pay 30 times what they paid under the Baathist regime for their medicines. “Under the former regime”, IRIN noted, “health care, including medicine, was almost completely subsidised by the government.
IRAQ: Children’s health deteriorating](http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2004/571/571p15.htm) GLW, Australia
On January 26, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported an increase in cases of encephalitis — a viral disease that causes swelling of the brain — among children in Baghdad over the preceding two weeks. “We have diagnosed 10 cases of encephalitis over the last two weeks”, Uday Abdel Rada, a senior doctor in the emergency ward of Baghdad’s Central Teaching Hospital, told the UNOCHA’s IRIN information service. If left untreated, encephalitis causes long-term mental disorders. The virus is spread from droplets, such as saliva, or from blood.
**Rada said it has been hard to treat the virus given the poor condition of Iraqi medical infrastructure after the US-led invasion of Iraq overthrew Saddam Hussein’s Baathist government on April 9. “We need to isolate the virus and have a greater supply of oxygen”, Rada said. “But it is very difficult to diagnose the outbreak at this point because we don’t have the necessary material. “You can see the children here. There is much suffering among them. No one seems to be helping them. We have been to the ministry of health for assistance and to the Americans. We have received nothing so far.” **
Iraqi hospitals have been chronically short of medicines since the overthrow of the Baathist government, and what medicines are available have massively increased in price. According to a January 22 IRIN report, it is not unusual for patients to have to pay 30 times what they paid under the Baathist regime for their medicines. “Under the former regime”, IRIN noted, “health care, including medicine, was almost completely subsidised by the government. Patients paid less than a dollar to visit a doctor. Medicine cost only a few cents more. Much of the medicine is imported from Jordan through Kimadia, the state-run drug company. Other drugs are made at Kimadia’s main factory, which is not running at the moment.”
**“Patients with diseases like epilepsy or diabetes can die without regular medication”, Faisal Abdul Jabar Hashi, general director of the 700 or so public clinics in Iraq, told IRIN, estimating more than 30,000 patients in Iraq required some sort of regular medication. Distribution problems have popped up many times over recent years, but never as bad as they are now, according to Dr Nima Abed, director of preventive health care at the Iraq ministry of health. **
With an estimated 60% unemployment rate, many families now are selling valuable items in their homes just to be able to afford to pay for a few months of medicine, he explained. “At a private clinic, you might pay more than 10 times more than you would at the public clinic for 10 tablets of a drug. It’s a very big problem”, Abed told IRIN, adding that for some patients, doctors can prescribe similar but less costly medicine, or a lower dose.
**Qasim Ali Abid, chief resident doctor at the same hospital, explained that the leading cause of death among his patients was from secondary infections caught while undergoing in-patient treatment. Hospital statistics put the secondary infection rate at 80% — a staggering rate for a Middle Eastern country like Iraq. A prime cause, Dr Abid said, is open sewage on the premises mixing with drinking water:
“There is sewage blocking the pipes. It is now in the water supply.” Rubble from pre-war maintenance also remains inside the building and there are only two toilets per floor of the four-floor building — used by patients, nurses, doctors and family members. Iraqi hospitals have been chronically short of medical supplies, trained doctors and money since the toppling of Saddam Hussein on April 9 last year. **
”Since 1990, Iraq has experienced a bigger increase in under-five mortality rates than any other country in the world and since the war there are several indications that under-five mortality has continued to rise,” Roger Wright, UNICEF’s representative for Iraq, told IRIN from the Jordanian capital, Amman, on Friday. Excerpt
IRAQ: Little progress on child mortality - UNICEF](http://www.health-now.org/site/article.php?articleId=357&menuId=17) Health Now 11 Oct 04
ANKARA, 11 Oct 2004 (IRIN) - The least progress has been made in Iraq to reduce child mortality since 1990, following years of sanctions and the US-led invasion, according to a new global report by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).