Shortages are killing thousands

LOS ANGELES TIMES
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Thousands of Iraqis are dying from shortages of medicine, vital equipment and qualified doctors, despite an infusion of nearly half a billion dollars from U.S. coffers into the country's health-care system, said Iraqi officials and American observers.
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 the country. 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 development, provincial Sunni Muslim doctors charge that Shiites who control the Health Ministry deliberately withhold medicines and other vital supplies.
Once, Iraqi health care was first-rate. Medicine and hospital care were free; doctors well-educated and respected. But neglect by Saddam Hussein and years of United Nations sanctions laid waste to the system.
At one of the busiest hospitals in Baghdad, five people die on average every day because medics and nurses don't have the equipment to treat heart attacks and other commonplace ills and accidents, said Husam Abud, a doctor at Yarmouk Hospital. That translates to more than 1,800 preventable deaths in a year in that hospital alone.
Child death rate
Hospitals already overburdened by large numbers of civilian victims of the country's civil war are also stretched by Iraqi military and police casualties. Because the security forces have no emergency facilities, soldiers bring wounded comrades to local hospitals for care, often forcing doctors at gunpoint to treat them first, said U.S. military officials.
Since 2003, U.S. agencies have spent at least $493 million of Iraqi reconstruction funds on health care, but no new hospitals and only a few local clinics have been built.
At the outset of the 2003 war, the U.S. administration pledged to cut the child mortality rate in half by 2005. But the rate has worsened, from 125 deaths per 1,000 births in 2002 to 130 deaths per 1,000 births this year, according to Health Ministry figures. By comparison, the child mortality rate in the U.S. was 8 per 1,000 births in 2005.
Iraq's child mortality rate has worsened, but the Health Ministry's budget has grown substantially. This year, the ministry has a $1.1 billion budget, compared to $22 million in 2002. More than 55 percent of its funds are spent on medication and supplies, and 33 percent on salaries.