Doug Lorimer
According to a report compiled by the Iraqi health ministry, the US-occupied country faces a soaring death toll from preventable diseases including typhoid and tuberculosis.
The report, released on October 13, notes that Iraqi's network of hospitals and health centres, once admired throughout the Middle East, has been severely damaged by the US invasion and subsequent unchecked looting, leaving staff struggling unable to cope with the mopunting health crisis.
According to the October 13 British Independent daily, the report states that "one third of Iraq's health centres and one in eight of the hospitals was looted of furniture, fridges and air conditioners or had equipment destroyed in the immediate aftermath of the war.
"Damage to water supplies and sanitation has led to a surge in typhoid, with 5460 cases recorded in the first quarter of 2004. Almost one in five urban households and three in five rural households do not have access to safe drinking water.
"Poverty has risen sharply, with an estimated 27% of the population living on less than [US]$2 a day in 2003, in a nation with among the richest oil reserves in the world.
"One in three children are chronically malnourished, putting their lives at serious risk from outbreaks of measles, mumps and jaundice, which are sweeping the country and infecting thousands."
Compiled from health ministry data and international survey, the report says Iraq's state of health is now rated on a par with the impoverished countries of the Sudan, Yemen and Afghanistan, where once it was ranked alongside Jordan and Kuwait.
Roger Wright, the representative of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) for Iraq, told reporters in the Jordanian capital of Amman on October 8 that UN economic sanctions imposed on Iraq in late 1990 had resulted in Iraq experiencing "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".
Wright was speaking at the public release of the new global report by UNICEF.
According to the report, during the 1990s, the greatest increases in child mortality occurred in southern and central Iraq, where under-five mortality rose from 56 to 131 per 1000 live births. While some indications showed improvement in child health between 1999 and 2002, UNICEF believed that since the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003 the death rate among Iraq children has risen again, It estimates that there the under-fives mortality rate is now 125 per 1000 live births.
From Green Left Weekly, October 27, 2004.
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