Iraq's Ailing Health System Seen Near Collapse
Thu May 08, 2003 06:59 PM ET
By Sue Pleming
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iraq's health system is near collapse and even without any major outbreaks of communicable diseases, some medicines are scarce and poor security is hampering access to the sick, U.S. experts said on Thursday.
Officials from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. health department told a consultative conference on Iraq's health system that the Health Ministry in Baghdad needed to be up and running as soon as possible.
USAID health adviser Andrew Clements said health services had been disrupted by the war and equipment, medicines and supplies looted but there had not been a major outbreak of communicable diseases yet.
'But no one is taking consolation in this at the moment because the potential does exist since the public health system and the immunization program has been disrupted,' he told the meeting, which was attended mainly by companies interested in finding out where their services could be used.
Doctors in the southern Iraqi city of Basra have reported 17 cases of cholera and say there could be dozens more due to contaminated water supplies and poor sanitation.
Medicines for some chronic illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease were also in short supply, said Clements, and water supplies were still disrupted in some areas.
One of most pressing issues, said Clements, was the lack of security which has left sick Iraqis with limited access to health care and medicines and equipment vulnerable to looters.
An employee from General Electric Medical Systems said about a third of the equipment they sold to Iraq via the U.N.'s oil-for-food program had been damaged or looted.
Ruth Walkup, who works in the Office of Global Health Affairs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said the World Health Organization had said they were concerned Iraq's health system would soon fall apart.
'What they are concerned about is that the very fragile system that worked (before the war) is getting ready to fall apart if it's not bolstered very quickly,' said Walkup.
In San Francisco, the advocacy director for the humanitarian group CARE said it remained very difficult to deliver needed health supplies into Iraq.
'Things are still quite chaotic and we have only been able to very slowly move additional supplies and people in,' said Kevin Henry. 'That's in large measure due to the breakdown in law and order, and that has ripple effects on everything else.'
'We have now moved in two or three convoys of supplies for hospitals in but we have encountered some security problems,' he said. 'Our warehouse that was in Baghdad was first hit by a missile and then looted, so those are the realities.' (Additional reporting by Adam Tanner in San Francisco)
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