Ιraq in the Times of Cholera…and Occupation |
| Monday, 27 October 2008 21:02 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Iraq in the Times of Cholera…and Occupation Sabah Ali Bagdad, Oct 17, 2008 With all the tragedies that the occupation brought to Iraq, the last thing it needs now is an epidemic, the cholera which is spreading in big numbers. It is a well-known fact that before April 9, 2003, Iraq was one of the countries that are clean of any epidemic. In 2001 WHO reported about the countries that are 100% clean of epidemics (tuberculosis, smallpox, AIDS, and cholera) and classified Iraq as immune against epidemics among other countries like Germany, Britain, U.S. and the Scandinavian countries. It is important to mention that Iraq, at that time, was under the economic sanctions for 12 years. Curiously enough, after April 9, 2003 these illnesses and epidemics began to invade the Iraqi society and environment in an unprecedented way. In the last 6 months the Cholera spread in a very noticeable manner, and if the occupiers’ attitude is indifference to this tragedy, it is curious (or rather not) that the Iraqi government too is behaving the same way, even with denial. And while the Cholera is spreading and horrifying people, the government does not move a finger to do anything, apart from giving false statement that the epidemic is under control. The black irony is as much as the government declares that the cholera is under control, new cases appear in different regions, especially in the south. It is well-known that cholera spreads in certain environments as swamps, unhealthy rivers, stagnant pools, and open sanitation systems, in addition to generally deteriorated health services, lack of potable sterilized water, and bad distribution pipes nets. The majority of water nets are in decay, so are the sanitation services. The majority of the contracts which build these nets are corrupt, as everything else in the ministry of health and other governmental apparatus. In addition to that, the provinces councils are controlled by what is referred to in Iraq now as the conflicting “occupation political parties” and the health executives who are protected by these parties against any charges of failure. The first case of cholera appeared in Hilla, the capital of the Babylon province. In one day, there were 80 cases of sever diarrhea, of different ages, but the majority were children. It happened that at the same time there was a Turkish organization called (SPTI), which works in the field of health and water station rehabilitation, in one of the villages. They have a moving laboratory and they began to give first aid to the people with diarrhea. They discovered that it is cholera, and that the percentage of cases to the number of the population suggested the epidemic. SPTI immediately demanded isolating the area, and announced that the water in that area is undrinkable, because the chlorine that was used in sterilizing the water has expired for more than 2 months. The Iraqi government did not reply to SPTI positively, so it sent its report to Turkey, and it was published in the media and the “scandal” began. The head of the health committee in the city council of Babylon, Hasan Tofan, confirmed that the Turkish organization reports and information are correct, and that the real number of the cases is much bigger in other areas of Babylon. Tofan also confirmed that the chlorine that is used, which is imported from Iran, is expired and that the Health director and water station director in Babylon are responsible for this catastrophe because they knew about the bad chlorine but they insisted on using it. This statement came on the background of the political conflict between the two biggest sectarian parties: the Dawa and the Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. While Tofan is from the Dawa, the Health director and the water distribution director are from the second party. From that moment on, statements started coming from different parts of the south and the mid-Euphrates provinces about the increasing numbers of cases. The government officials from both parties exchanged accusations of responsibility. Three provinces (Amara, Kut, and Qadisiya) declared that the cholera epidemic has spread in these areas 2 months earlier. They demanded that these provinces declared epidemic stricken. So it was only through power conflict between the “occupation parties” that the tragedy was exposed. Earlier this month, the Iraq government announced that the cholera cases all over Iraq are 460, and only 8 are dead. But other confirmed information states that the cases are at least 904, with 84 cholera deaths. The following table (obtained from the Health offices in the provinces, and checked with the corresponding reports in Baghdad Health Departments).
In Amara, which is an area of marshes, the number is the highest. But these are only the registered numbers of the cases in the hospitals statistics departments. Many other cases die at home without knowing the reason; it is only after the death that the case is known. Resources in Babylon alone say that the cases are more than 1000. Curiously, in Babylon, the number of deaths registered in the Health department in the last 2 months was 1562, which is high. If one third of this number, as minimum, is due to Cholera, then the number is 520 cholera deaths, not to mention the cases that survived. On the other hand, the Najaf cemetery (the biggest in Iraq) receives normally between 40-70 deaths a day. In the days of battles or armed clashes the number rises to 80-120. But in the last 2 months the number rose to an average of 110-130 a day, which is higher than violent days, although there were no big armed confrontations in this period. The cemetery office says that they have over load of work, and they wanted more grave diggers. Families say that they have to wait 4-6 hours to have a chance to bury their dead. On October 11, the minister of Health, Salih Al-Hasnawi, had to attend a hearing in the Parliament, to answer for the representatives’ questions, especially of the Committee of Health and of the Committee of Integrity, on the reason of the failure to confront the spread of cholera. (The Parliament and the Government headquarters are in the Green Zone). When the Health Minster arrived in the Green Zone to attend the Parliament hearing, he was prevented from entering the Parliament by the guards at the security point, on orders of Sami Al-Askari, the councilor of Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki. Resources in the south of Iraq say that one of the main reasons of the cholera epidemic is the Iranian alimentation materials which are invading the markets in most of the provinces, especially dairies. The director of the Babylon Central Laboratory, Jum’a Abid Onn, stated that an Iranian dairy with trade mark DOG is especially not good because it has a festering bacterium which is a good host of the cholera virus. Many mineral water bottles imported from United Arab Emirates or from Bahrain which are not good appeared to be actually imported from Iran by a relative of the Babylon governor. After he gave this statement, Jum’a was immediately fired from his job, and then disappeared. His family found his body later in the morgue of Hilla General Hospital. Actually this is not the first time that Jum’a gave a statement challenging the governor’s authority. Earlier, he threatened to expose another fishy deal, in which a medically corrupt blood was supplied by Iran to the Hilla hospitals. Jum’a said that he has all the documents which prove that, and also which expose the names of the dealers involved and how they threw the bad blood in the Euphrates River. Finally, a source in Al-Sabah daily in Bagdad, said that the Prime Minster’s media adviser Yaseen Majeed, met in his house in the Green Zone with the directors of Al-Iraquiya and Al-Faiha satellite TVs, and the editors in chief of Al-Sabah (the government newspaper) , Al-Mu’tamar newspaper (Ahmad Al-Chalabi group), and Al-Bayan of Al-Dawa Party. Majeed told the journalists to emphasize that the government is controlling the cholera epidemic, and that it is taking all the necessary procedures to stop the cholera spread, and that all the media fuss is politically motivated for electoral reasons to undermine the achievements of Al-Maliki (personally) and his government. |
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