Despair flowed from a river that once brought luck
By Michael Viola '59

Iraqis have a pessimistic view of life. They were nurtured on the first recorded story of human mortality - the epic of Gilgamesh, the part-man, part-God, king of Uruk in Babylon. They endured Saddam Hussein and his thugs for more than 30 years, and came to believe that the economic sanctions, often referred to as "the strangulation" in Arabic, would never end. But even the stoic Iraqis have been horror-struck by the recent war and the occupation.

My colleagues and I at Medicine for Peace have been working in Iraq since 1991. Touring the hospitals today, we see the dire situation faced by ordinary Iraqis, particularly children. With the complete breakdown of law and order, and the continued uncontrolled violence, hospitals cannot provide even minimal services. Basic medications looted from hospitals have not been replaced, and hospital staff, especially nurses, face the risk of being mugged, abducted, and raped.

Children are seen in hospital emergency rooms with traumatic injuries, either from bullet wounds or bomb blasts; the children often are caught in the crossfire between vigilantes and looters, or are shot by nervous soldiers of the Coalition Provisional Authority. Unexploded munitions, particularly American cluster bombs and munitions abandoned by the Iraqi army, are a major hazard; unsuspecting youngsters think they are toys. Power outages make it impossible to purify water, leading to a surge in childhood dysentery. Thirteen years of sanctions have left a quarter of Iraqi children under five chronically malnourished. They are easy prey for infectious organisms.

These are not new problems, but they are growing worse. For centuries, the Euphrates River had brought prosperity to the people in Diwaniyah, in central Iraq. During the Gulf War, the coalition forces bombed electrical power plants, water, and sanitation facilities along the northern course of the Tigris and Euphrates, resulting in the discharge of thousands of tons of untreated sewage into the rivers. By the time the polluted water reached Diwaniyah, it was brimming with organisms that cause human disease. The river was the only source of water for cooking, bathing, and relief from the insufferable summer heat.

I recall going on rounds of the pediatric wards at the local hospital with Dr. Samaya Salah, the director; though that was in 1995, I see the same things today. The fans and ventilation system were at a standstill, and hot, smothering air hung in the corridors. Metal cribs with sick children lined the hallways and patient rooms. We entered a large ward and examined the child in the nearest bed. She was an infant, with a colorless fluid dripping from an intravenous bottle down plastic tubing and through a needle in the crevice of her arm. Her tiny body had no muscle, just transparent skin draped over skeleton. Dark, staring eyes were sunk in a skull that appeared too large for the rest of her body. A belly swollen with fluid accentuated her bony, pencil-thin legs. She had deep sores at the cracks of her lips. Clumps of her reddish-brown hair fell on the white bed sheet.

The child labored to move air in and out of her chest, and took long pauses between breaths. I tried to listen to her chest with my stethoscope, but when I touched her or gently moved her onto her side, she screamed. It was a high-pitched screech that came from the back of her throat. Only children suffering from malignant malnutrition cried like that. I scanned the room; a chorus of other children was squawking in the same way. The child's mother, a young woman draped from head to toe in a black abaya and veil, sat at the edge of her crib. She had a thin, weather-beaten face marked with traditional Bedouin tattoos. She patiently fanned her daughter with a piece of used X-ray film, attempting to cool the child's body and to keep the flies off her eyes.

Dr. Samaya read the patient's history: Donya was a five-month-old girl who weighed 3.8 kilograms, hardly more than when she was born. She came from a poor tribal family. Food was scarce, so her mother had difficulty producing sufficient breast milk. Then the child developed constant, watery diarrhea from the bad water. She had a high fever for five days, and went in and out of coma. I told Dr. Samaya that I was concerned that this child would not live much longer.

Each bed held a child with uncontrollable watery diarrhea, bloody diarrhea, or typhoid fever; I suspected one case of cholera. All the children were malnourished. It did not matter if they were Shia, Sunni, Kurd, Turkoman, Chaldean, Assyrian, or Yezidi. War had reduced them to an indistinguishable, pathetic collection of bones.

Return to News Archive