Decrepit healthcare adds to toll in Iraq

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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/la-fg-health11nov11,1,1634064.story?coll=chi-news-hed

A once enviable system lacks doctors, medicine and key equipment. Despite U.S. funding, no cure seems imminent.

By Louise Roug
Times Staff Writer
Published November 11, 2006


BAGHDAD — Thousands of Iraqis are believed to have died from shortages of medicine, vital equipment and qualified doctors, despite an infusion of nearly half a billion dollars from U.S. coffers into this country's healthcare system, Iraqi officials and American observers say.

Raging sectarian violence as well as theft, corruption and mismanagement have drained health resources and made deliveries of supplies difficult. Exacerbating the crisis, hundreds of doctors have been killed, and thousands have fled Iraq. The child mortality rate, a key indicator of a nation's health, has worsened since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, according to Iraqi government figures.

In the most sinister reported development, provincial Sunni Muslim doctors charge that Shiite Muslims who control the Health Ministry deliberately withhold medicines and other vital supplies. Privately, some U.S. officials say that hard-line Shiites use the ministry for political and sectarian ends.

This fall, U.S. troops raided the ministry, arresting employees suspected of kidnapping and killing patients at the Medical City Hospital in Baghdad. Afterward, ministry officials severed ties with the Americans and refused to open an $800,000 clinic built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in a deprived Sunni neighborhood in the capital.