Dateline ACT

Iraq 0703

Vignettes of courage and resourcefulness - with looters in the streets and graves in the garden

Amman, Jordan, 22 April, 2003
By Jonathan Frerichs, ACT press officer

While church aid contacts with co-workers inside Iraq are still minimal because of bad communications, some good humanitarian news is getting out. Stories just starting to reach Jordan tell of Iraqi health workers finding ways to do their jobs despite post-war disorder and strife.

• As a result of an appeal by religious leaders in the mosques, people are returning stolen medicines and supplies to hospitals throughout Baghdad, the International Committee of the Red Cross reports. The returned loot has become the main source of supply for the city’s hospitals. [ACT Middle East Council of Churches helped stock some 50 churches and mosques with relief food, water and blankets for the war.]
• One driver reached the outskirts of Baghdad with a truckload of urgently needed medicines the day the city fell, according to the World Health Organization. He turned around and hid the truck for nearly two weeks in a village where he has relatives, and only now has reached Baghdad. His cargo of medicines was intact and is now safe. The drugs – for treating communicable diseases – are more needed than ever.
• Staff at a hospital in Nasiriyah kept their facility open throughout heavy fighting in that city, WHO has learned. Staff members protected files and equipment, even taking computers home for safekeeping.

More than half of Iraq’s health facilities are working again and more than half the country’s health staff are back on the job, according to preliminary assessments. A WHO spokesperson said that staff in Baghdad who could not get to their own hospitals have gone to other health facilities to help out. At one Baghdad primary health center that is still missing over 90 percent of its staff, community volunteers have stepped in to help.

Basic health needs, however, are severe and rising. In the 2,000 people that come to its four clinics each day, an NGO helping clinics re-open in a poor section of Baghdad is seeing more diarrhea now than before the war. The organization has applied to the U.S. church-related All Our Children campaign for assistance.

Ninety percent of the children coming to Baghdad’s Central Child Hospital also have diarrhea, UNICEF says. That institution is receiving 2,000 patients each day. The hospital has had to bury 100 people, so far, in its garden.