The doctors who are too afraid to care for patients

[krkaufman]

(Didn't find this searching through LBN. Good info for anyone falling prey to the "media doesn't report the good news" propaganda. This article seems a good measure for how things really are in Iraq.)

"If this is freedom and democracy then all countries should start looking for a dictator”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-2277619_1,00.html

By James Hider and Ali al-Hamdani
The Times (UK)
July 20, 2006

THE number of violent deaths in Iraq topped 100 a day last month as the country descended into open sectarian warfare.

Almost as shocking is that the number killed in May and June was greater than the number of injured: Iraq’s health care system is close to collapse and can no longer care for the wounded.

Doctors have been kidnapped for money by criminals, murdered by insurgents because they are viewed as government workers, or shot by militias because they work in hospitals in areas dominated by a different sectarian community, be it Sunni or Shia.

[leftchick]

1. Iraq? where is Iraq?

since the Israelis strarted bombing the shit out of the mid-east I have heard nothing about Iraq on tv.

[Mandate My Ass]

2. What horrors have we unleashed on these people?

Baghdad’s medical facilities are simply overwhelmed by the daily carnage. They were stripped down by a decade of UN sanctions, looted after the US invasion and then slowly rebuilt to cope with a peacetime city than never materialised. There are only 30 intensive care beds in the capital.

The Ministry of Health has been taken over by supporters of Moqtada al-Sadr, the rebel Shia cleric, who have little medical experience.

Adel Abdel-Mohsin, the Deputy Health Minister, told The Times that 190 medical staff had been murdered and 400 doctors kidnapped and that 1,000 doctors had fled the country.

[UpInArms]

3. more from your link:

Ziyad, an anaesthetist who declined to give his surname, said that nothing was being done to protect the country’s vital health workers. “It’s unbelievable. Every day we lose another doctor and neither the Health Ministry nor the Government does anything. They fail to provide protection while they managed to provide their illiterate MPs with 30 guards each.”

Sounds like the new and improved Iraqi government is taking its cues from Rumsfailed.