PHA-Exchange> IRAQ- Looming health disaster- a first hand report from Baghdad (PART 2)

[UNNIKRISHNAN PV (Dr)]

Sent: Sunday, March 16, 2003 8:10 AM
Subject: IRAQ- Looming health disaster- a first hand report from Baghdad


IRAQ- Looming health disaster

http://www.newindpress.com/sunday/sundayitems.asp?id=SEH20030315041710&eTitle=Cover+Story&rLink=0

            
      March 16,2003   THE NEW INDIAN EXPRESS 
      Cover Story-   part 2 

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        Looming health disaster- 

        Dr P V Unnikrishnan & Prof S Parasuraman report first-hand from Baghdad 

        The UN, aid agencies and other experts with first-hand knowledge of the ground situation in Iraq are united in one warning: As and when it comes, the new war in Iraq will be longer, more devastating and more horrendously costly in human terms than anyone expects. 

        The American strategy is not necessarily built around a long operation. In fact, Western sources say that America will aim at quickly destroying Iraq's military and administrative infrastructure and electricity supplies. After the country has thus been rendered inoperative, American strategists hope to draw out Saddam Hussein's crack troop in and around Baghdad and attack them with massive ground forces supported by intense aerial bombardment. 

        The actual scenario on the ground need not necessarily follow this script. Driven to a wall, there is no saying what the Iraqi forces will do. According to a report by Britain's Oxford Research Group last October, Iraq could launch strategic strikes on neighbouring countries. That in turn could persuade the British Government to use a nuclear weapon on Baghdad. On the other hand, the Gulf war experience of 1991 suggests the possibility of Iraq, its survival threatened, using chemical and biological weapons. Clearly the situation could be uglier than anything the world has seen. 

        Whatever happens, the plight of the people, already stretched to unbearable limits, will decidedly get worse. According to the US-based Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), ''A public-health emergency created by an impaired infrastructure exacerbates the Iraqi population's vulnerability to disease and hunger, given the already degraded condition of health facilities, potable water, and limited food supply''. Some 16 million people are wholly dependent on government distributed food from the UN's oil-for-food programme. During a war, existing supply lines will be either shut down or rerouted. Iraq tried to grow its own food but has been crippled by a major drought in the past 3 years, noted Oxfam in a briefing paper published in December last year. Attempts to irrigate the land have been hampered by the sanctions. The 2002 wheat harvest of 16 millions tonnes will run out in early 2003, added Oxfam. 

        Currently food is distributed 21 days per month by the government and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to about 1 million people per day. This ''begs the question of how the population's basic needs will be met when government operations and transport and storage infrastructure are disrupted or destroyed by war'', said Joel Charny, vice president of policy for Refugees International in a statement published on Feb 5. 

        According to a survey published by The Lancet last month, Iraq's health sector currently has a 4-month supply of basic medicines and medical supplies. But these stocks will be inadequate during and after a war. Immediate health concerns during a war will be conflict-related injuries. But as war progresses there will be a rapid increase in diarrhoeal disease if access to potable water is denied, and if oil wells are sabotaged the contaminated air will cause a simultaneous rise in respiratory infections. 

        Water treatment plants that have emergency electricity generators cover 70 percent of the urban population but only 10 percent of rural people. UNICEF has warned that at least 39 percent of people will need to be supplied with water rations. 

        The country's sanitation system is also in a sorry state of repair with 500,000 tonnes of raw sewage pumped daily into fresh water sources. Half of all sewage treatment plants do not work and of those that do 25 percent do not meet Iraq's environmental standards, said Oxfam in a paper published in December 2002. 

        The UN has noted that of the 5 million people living in Baghdad, 4 million have access to a sewerage system. If electricity supplies are disrupted NGOs are concerned that only 10 percent of the sewage treatment plants serving Baghdad have emergency electricity supplies. ''It cannot be emphasised too strongly that even a 'best-case' scenario of a limited war of short duration, perhaps comparable to 1991, would have much greater impact on the Iraqi people'', said MedAct, the UK affiliate of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, in a report published last year. 

        MedAct warned that ''if the war is likely to cause worse problems than those it sets out to solve, then it is ill-advised under any circumstances, and other options must be explored''. 

        Dr P V Unnikrishnan is a medical doctor working on humanitarian issues with the People's Health Movement. Prof S Parasuraman is ActionAid Policy Coordinator in Bangkok. They visited Baghdad in February on a humanitarian mission on behalf of ActionAid, People's Health Movement and like-minded organisations.
     

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