by Andrew North
It is the
sight of the parents that strikes you first when you enter the leukemia
ward at the Saddam Central Hospital for Children in Baghdad. Sitting
next to each bed, their taut, bleak faces tell the story before you even
look at the child curled up beside them. These mothers and fathers know
that once their children are admitted here, there is almost no chance
they will leave alive.
“We call
this ward the ‘ward of death,’” said Dr. Basim Al Abdali, almost
matter-of-factly, as he inspected a patient’s notes at the end of a
bed. A four-year-old boy had died just hours before this journalist’s
visit. “Every day we lose one patient, maybe more than one patient,
just in this ward. The mortality rate for leukemia and other cancers
here in this ward is 100 percent.”
There are no
exact figures for the number of deaths from leukemia in Iraq. But the
World Health Organization (WHO) office in Baghdad does not question the
Iraqi Health Ministry’s estimate that since 1990 there has been a
fourfold increase in the incidence of the disease.
In the West,
many leukemia patients can be treated for the disease and survive. Not
in Iraq. Dr. Al Abdali blames the U.N. embargo on the country, which
will be 10 years old in August. Because, he said, it means his hospital
cannot provide the right treatment at the right time. One problem,
according to Dr. Al Abdali, is that the Saddam hospital cannot get the
chemotherapy drugs it needs in sufficient quantities. “We request
them,” he said, “but either they’re put on hold or they don’t
turn up for months.”
What the
hospital needs most of all, said staff members, is a specialist facility
for carrying out bone marrow transplant operations. “No Iraqi child
with leukemia has the chance to have this kind of operation, but in your
country every patient with leukemia can have this operation,” said Dr.
Al Abdali.
At the
moment, no Iraqi hospital is equipped to do bone marrow transplants and,
needless to say, few Iraqis have the option of traveling to have the
operation abroad. At Saddam Children’s Hospital, they can barely
afford basic facilities for their patients.
The leukemia
ward is a dingy, rundown place, with paint peeling off the walls. It is
divided into six rooms, with six beds in each, but children are not
isolated from each other. This means any infections pass rapidly among
them.
The doctors
admit that the children’s relatives often carry out basic nursing
tasks because the hospital is so short-staffed. Since 1990, many of
Iraq’s best medical specialists have left the country.
Nine-year-old
Mohanad Adnan was one of the in-patients in the leukemia ward when this
reporter toured the hospital. But he had lost so much weight that his
body looked like that of a six-year-old. A large blood blister had
developed over his right eye, forcing it shut. His other eye was
expressionless and empty and his mother Hanna could do little but try to
make him comfortable.
Mohanad was
no longer responding to the chemotherapy available in the hospital, said
Dr. Al Abdali, who was blunt about his prospects. “We expect the death
of this patient in a few days because of the continuous bleeding.”
Mohanad
Adnan’s mother, Hanna, now expected the worst. She had been at his
bedside for the past four weeks. Speaking through a translator, she said
she had no doubt what had caused her son’s illness. “The cause is
known, by all people inside and outside Iraq. The cause is the
contamination of our land during the war.”
What she was
referring to is the widespread conviction among Iraqis that the
increased incidence of leukemia over the past few years is caused by
residues from munitions tipped with depleted uranium (DU) fired by U.S.
and British forces during the 1991 Gulf war. As the result of the
explosion of these munitions, DU particles are believed to have found
their way into the food chain and the water supply.
The reality
is that there has been no independent confirmation, so far, of a link
between DU munitions and leukemia. But anecdotal evidence strongly
suggests that it is a possibility.
Most
leukemia cases are turning up in southern Iraq, where military activity
was most intense. Even in Baghdad, in central Iraq, the majority of the
patients in the leukemia ward at Saddam Children’s Hospital are
referred from towns and cities in the south, such as Basra, Nasiriyah,
Kerbala and Najaf.
The Baghdad
representative of the World Health Organization, Dr. Ghulam Popal, said
WHO intends to launch a detailed study of the issue later this year. But
he said in an interview that already “I suspect that this depleted
uranium is one of the causes of this leukemia.”
There also
is suspicion in the U.S. and Britain that DU munitions may be among the
causes of the so-called Gulf war syndrome, the debilitating condition
that has afflicted so many Gulf veterans. An official at Britain’s
Foreign Office in London said “we are skeptical about Iraqi claims”
of a link between DU munitions and leukemia. Yet, significantly, he
added, “We would welcome a comprehensive investigation to look into
the issue, covering all the possible factors. There is a genuine concern
over the issue of depleted uranium munitions in Iraq.”
Yet for many
Iraqis talk of a study is, well, academic. In their view, the two
countries they blame for spreading the leukemia in the first place are
compounding the problem now by denying people the necessary treatment
they need through continuing the embargo.
In
Washington and London’s view, it is President Saddam Hussain who bears
most of the responsibility, because he refuses to comply with U.N.
demands on disarmament which, in theory, should lead to the lifting of
the embargo. The U.S. has also made repeated allegations that the Iraqi
leader is spending money on palaces and weapons which could go toward
Iraq’s health needs.
However, aid
officials with experience of Iraq’s health system argue that, even if
true, claims like this are missing the point. After 10 years of
sanctions and under-funding, the Iraqi health-care system has
deteriorated to a point where it cannot meet the country’s needs, they
say. The country hasn’t built a new hospital since 1990, and yet in
the same period the population has grown by an estimated six million.
“It’s not just the embargo that makes things difficult,” said one
doctor at Saddam Children’s Hospital. “We’re very isolated. We
don’t get scientific journals and information on new treatments. And
many good doctors have left.”
In fact, the
Iraqi Health Ministry has recently initiated plans to set up a bone
marrow transplant facility at Baghdad’s Mansour Hospital. Iraqi
specialists have been to Cairo to get expert advice from Egyptian
doctors. And the ministry plans to request the necessary equipment from
the U.N. sanctions committee.
But Khalid
Jamil Mohammed Al Hayat, under-secretary at the Health Ministry, was not
hopeful. “I expect again the Americans will suspend this equipment”
because, he said, they are likely to claim that it could have a dual
use, meaning that it could be employed for military purposes. “They
say it even about the tires that we require for our garbage trucks, that
these could be dual use.” He gave a weary laugh.
There was
also a sense of weariness on the leukemia ward at Saddam Children’s
Hospital, except that here it did not come with a smile. The mothers and
fathers watching their dying children don’t seem angry or bitter, just
confused and tired.
“It’s
God’s will,” one mother said, when asked how she feels about the
plight of her son. There is a sense that after nearly 11 years of
sanctions, with no apparent end in sight, anger has simply given way to
exhaustion.
Andrew North is a
British journalist.
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Source:
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by courtesy & © 2001 Andrew
North & WROMEA
