[WCUSP] Fwd: The Battle to Save Iraq's Children

[yvonne simmons]

--- sdyck at hevanet.com wrote:

> From: <sdyck at hevanet.com>
> To: "Democracy Now!"
: The Battle to Save Iraq's Children
> Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2007 11:45:07 -0800
> 
>   a.. This is what our theft, tax dollars, and
> silence have created!b.. The 
> battle to save Iraq's children. Doctors issue plea
> to Tony Blair to end the 
> scandal of medical shortages in the war zone
> By Colin Brown, Deputy Political Editor
> Published: 19 January 2007 
>
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2165470.ece
> The desperate plight of children who are dying in
> Iraqi hospitals for the 
> lack of simple equipment that in some cases can cost
> as little as 95p is 
> revealed today in a letter signed by nearly 100
> eminent doctors.
> 
> They are backed by a group of international lawyers,
> who say the conditions 
> in hospitals revealed in their letter amount to a
> breach of the Geneva 
> conventions that require Britain and the US as
> occupying forces to protect 
> human life.
> 
> In a direct appeal to Tony Blair, the doctors
> describe desperate shortages 
> causing "hundreds" of children to die in hospitals.
> The signatories include 
> Iraqi doctors, British doctors who have worked in
> Iraqi hospitals, and 
> leading UK consultants and GPs.
> 
> "Sick or injured children who could otherwise be
> treated by simple means are 
> left to die in hundreds because they do not have
> access to basic medicines 
> or other resources," the doctors say. "Children who
> have lost hands, feet 
> and limbs are left without prostheses. Children with
> grave psychological 
> distress are left untreated," they add.
> 
> They say babies are being ventilated with a plastic
> tube in their noses and 
> dying for want of an oxygen mask, while other babies
> are dying because of 
> the lack of a phial of vitamin K or sterile needles,
> all costing about 95p. 
> Hospitals have little hope of stopping fatal
> infections spreading from baby 
> to baby because of the lack of surgical gloves,
> which cost about 3.5p a 
> pair.
> 
> Among those who have signed the letter are Chris
> Burns-Cox, a consultant 
> physician at Gloucester Royal Hospital; Dr Maggie
> Wright, the director of 
> intensive care at James Page University Hospital;
> Professor Debbie Lawlor, 
> professor of epidemiology and public health at
> University College London; 
> Professor George Davey Smith, professor of clinical
> epidemiology at Bristol 
> university; Dr Philip Wilson, senior clinical
> research fellow at Glasgow 
> University; and Dr Heba al-Naseri, who has
> experienced the conditions in 
> Iraqi hospitals. Dr al-Naseri, who has worked at
> Diwaniyah Maternity 
> Hospital and the Diwaniyah University Hospital,
> describes in harrowing 
> detail what the conditions were like for a newborn
> baby - one of the lucky 
> ones who survived - called Amin.
> 
> "Amin had to be fed powdered milk, diluted with tap
> water. There wasn't 
> enough money to buy expensive formula milk or
> bottled water - their price 
> had risen above the increase in wages since 2003.
> The problems with the 
> intermittent electricity and gas supply meant
> regular boiled water could not 
> be guaranteed. With the dormant waste and sewage
> disposal systems, 
> drinking-water is more likely to be contaminated,"
> he said.
> 
> Cases the doctors highlight include a child who died
> because the doctor only 
> had a sterile needle for an adult and could not find
> a needle small enough 
> to fit the vein, and another child who died because
> the doctors had no 
> oxygen mask that fitted.
> 
> The doctors say the UK, as one of the occupying
> powers under UN resolution 
> 1483, has to comply with the Geneva and Hague
> conventions that require the 
> UK and the US to "maintain order and to look after
> the medical needs of the 
> population". But, the doctors say: "This they failed
> to do and the knock-on 
> effect of this failure is affecting Iraqi children's
> hospitals with 
> increasing ferocity."
> 
> They call on the UK to account properly for the
> $33bn (£16.7bn) in the 
> development fund for Iraq which should have supplied
> the means for hospitals 
> to treat children properly. They say more than half
> of the money - $14bn - 
> is believed to have vanished through corruption,
> theft and payments to 
> mercenaries.
> 
> They say that all revenues from Iraq's oil exports
> should now pass directly 
> to the Iraqi people and that illegal contracts
> entered into by the Coalition 
> Provisional Authority be revoked.
> 
> Their letter was supported by experts in
> international law, including Harvey 
> Goldstein, professor of social statistics at the
> University of Bristol, and 
> Bill Bowring, a barrister and professor of law at
> Birkbeck College.
> 
> Nicholas Wood, an architect who helped to organise
> the protest, said they 
> had evidence on film of dead babies being dumped in
> cardboard boxes. "In one 
> hospital, there were three babies to an incubator.
> The incubators are 36 
> years old and are held together by tape and a bit of
> wire. They are wrecks. 
> They cost about £5,000 each, but that is nothing to
> compared to the cost of 
> a missile," he said.
> 
> The letter was sent to Downing Street via Hilary
> Benn, the International 
> Development Secretary, by his predecessor, Clare
> Short.
> 
> A system in meltdown
> 
> * Save the Children estimate that 59 in 1,000
> newborn babies are dying in 
> Iraq, one of the highest mortality rates in the
> world. Thousands of infants 
> are dying because of the lack of basic cheap
> equipment. In Diwaniyah 
> hospital, south of Baghdad, one doctor had to try to
> ventilate a baby with a 
> plastic tube in its nose because he lacked an oxygen
> mask costing just 95p. 
> The baby died.
> 
> * In the same hospital, a baby with a rare illness
> causing internal bleeding 
> died due to lack of a phial of vitamin K, which
> would have cost less than 
> £1.
> 
> * One doctor in a Baghdad hospital recently tried to
> save the life of a 
> child with a drip, but he lacked a sterile needle
> for a child and the child 
> died. The lack of rubber surgical gloves, which cost
> 3.5p a pair, has hugely 
> increased the risk of infections.
> 
> * Premature babies are crammed three to an
> incubator, when an incubator can 
> be found. An incubator costs about £5,000.
> 
> * Only 50 per cent of the pre-war total of doctors
> remain in Iraq. The US 
> clearout of Ba'ath party members sympathetic to
> Saddam Hussein after the 
> invasion has led to a breakdown of health
> administration.
> 
> * The British doctors are calling for guarantees of
> safety to be given to 
> all medical staff in Iraq by the US and British
> forces. Above all there is a 
> need to stop the militias killing doctors and
> nurses.
> 
> * Hospitals have been bombed and ambulances shot at.
> Helicopters could be 
> laid on by the US and UK to ferry cases to Jordan,
> Syria, Iran and Saudi 
> Arabia for treatment of acute trauma and disease.
> 
> * Doctors are calling on Britain and America to
> restore at least $2bn (£1bn) 
> of $14bn that has gone missing since the invasion.
> Part of this sum, lost in 
> corruption or to militias, was earmarked for
> hospitals.
> 
> * Up to 260,000 children may have died since the
> 2003 invasion of Iraq.
> 
> 
> 
> 



 
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