csua.org/u/cwl -> www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A809-2004Nov20.html
All RSS Feeds Children Pay Cost of Iraq's Chaos Malnutrition Nearly Double What It Was Before Invasion By Karl Vick Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, November 21, 2004; Page A01 BAGHDAD -- Acute malnutrition among young children in Iraq has nearly dou bled since the United States led an invasion of the country 20 months ag o, according to surveys by the United Nations, aid agencies and the inte rim Iraqi government. The new figure translates to roughly 400,000 Ir aqi children suffering from "wasting," a condition characterized by chro nic diarrhea and dangerous deficiencies of protein.
Sign Up Now "These figures clearly indicate the downward trend," said Alexander Malya vin, a child health specialist with the UNICEF mission to Iraq. The surveys suggest the silent human cost being paid across a country con vulsed by instability and mismanagement. While attacks by insurgents hav e grown more violent and more frequent, deteriorating basic services tak e lives that many Iraqis said they had expected to improve under America n stewardship. Iraq's child malnutrition rate now roughly equals that of Burundi, a cent ral African nation torn by more than a decade of war. "The people are astonished," said Khalil M Mehdi, who directs the Nutrit ion Research Institute at the Health Ministry. The institute has been in volved with nutrition surveys for more than a decade; the latest one was conducted in April and May but has not been publicly released. Mehdi and other analysts attributed the increase in malnutrition to dirty water and to unreliable supplies of the electricity needed to make it s afe by boiling. In poorer areas, where people rely on kerosene to fuel t heir stoves, high prices and an economy crippled by unemployment aggrava te poor health. "Things have been worse for me since the war," said Kasim Said, a day lab orer who was at Baghdad's main children's hospital to visit his ailing y ear-old son, Abdullah. The child, lying on a pillow with a Winnie the Po oh washcloth to keep the flies off his head, weighs just 11 pounds. "During the previous regime, I used to work on the government projects. When he finds work, he added, he can bring home $10 to $14 a day. If his wife is fortunate enough to find a can of Isomil, the nutritional supple ment that doctors recommend, she pays $7 for it. "But the lady in the next bed said she just paid $10," said Suad Ahmed, w ho sat cross-legged on a bed in the same ward, trying to console her ske letal 4-month-old granddaughter, Hiba, who suffers from chronic diarrhea . Iraqi health officials like to surprise visitors by pointing out that the nutrition issue facing young Iraqis a generation ago was obesity. Malnu trition, they say, appeared in the early 1990s with UN trade sanctions championed by Washington to punish the government led by President Sadd am Hussein for invading Kuwait in 1990. International aid efforts and the UN oil-for-food program helped reduce the ruinous impact of sanctions, and the rate of acute malnutrition amo ng the youngest Iraqis gradually dropped from a peak of 11 percent in 19 96 to 4 percent in 2002. But the invasion in March 2003 and the widespre ad looting in its aftermath severely damaged the basic structures of gov ernance in Iraq, and persistent violence across the country slowed the p ace of reconstruction almost to a halt. In its most recent assessment of five sectors of Iraq's reconstruction, t he Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington research group, said health care was worsening at the quickest pace.
|
http://csua.com/feed/