We sure showed them, didn't we.
Iraq's once-envied health care system lost to war, corruption
By Corinne Reilly | McClatchy Newspapers
BAGHDAD — Dr. Zinah Jawad leaned over her patient and peered into his glazed eyes. It doesn't look good, she said, shaking her head.
The man had arrived at Baghdad Teaching Hospital's emergency department a few hours earlier with a high fever and dizziness. Now he lies shaking, sweat soaking his dirty clothes.
The Teaching Hospital's emergency room is cleaner than most in Baghdad. In fact, it's widely considered the best in the Iraqi capital. Still, flies buzz overhead, and on busy days there aren't enough beds or oxygen tanks. Across the room, a crude sign made with binder paper and tape marks the department's two-bed cardiac unit, which lacks a reliable defibrillator.
Jawad, a second-year medical resident, turns to the sick man's wife, who's perched anxiously on a ripped chair at his bedside. "We suspect meningitis," she says.
If Jawad is correct, the man probably will die long before she can confirm her diagnosis. Her chances of getting antibiotics to treat him are even slimmer.
The hospital can't perform the lab test she needs. Its stock of drugs and basic supplies is so unreliable that doctors routinely dispatch patients' relatives to fetch medicines, IV fluids and syringes from private merchants or the black market.
Jawad can't explain the shortages. Her department is always careful in placing its orders with the national health ministry, which supplies all of Iraq's public hospitals. Often, though, the medicines never show up.
"No one can tell us why," Jawad said. "It is as if they just disappear somewhere."
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http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/68193.html
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