While Americans struggle with trying to access the health care system even if they have insurance, the Iraqi people are struggling to access the basics of life. In a very real sense, there is not a health care system in Iraq just a patchwork woefully inadequate services. Like many other so called structures, in Iraq there is the appearance of a shell, and minimal substance, nothing ordinary citizens can rely on.
While Americans are told to wait for the latest report, Iraqis are waiting for clean water. While Americans are told to be patient, Iraqis are getting sicker because of a lack of access to the basics. While ordinary Americans try to ponder the money being spent and wonder where it is all going, Iraqis must be wondering the same.
According to an Oxfam report, 90 percent of Iraq's hospitals lack medical and surgical supplies. Imagine going to a hospital after being injured and being told that you need surgery only to find out there aren't any surgeons. Personnel to staff hospitals is thin, many health care providers are fleeing Baghdad and other areas of violence.In a Q&A session conducted at Johns Hopkins regarding health care challenges, the Dean of Medicine at the University of Baghdad, noted that enrollment at the medical school has decreased, there is a shortage of qualified professors to teach, and professors and doctors have often been targeted by death squads. There is a deep and serious need for doctors to come to Iraq and to do basic training and set up facilities. Dr.Khunda, noted that he has tried to interest friends in the UK in coming to Iraq to offer training and he has met with resistance because of safety concerns. Patients in hospitals are gambling even if they seek treatment. It is estimated that 70 percent of critically wounded patients die in the hospital because of a shortage staff, drugs, and equipment.
Iraqis are being squeezed by hunger and poverty, with 43 percent of Iraqis living in absolute poverty. As a result, 21 percent of children are malnourished.
Iraqis are also painfully aware that they are not safe in hospitals even if they can be treated. They run the risk of being shot or arrested in hospitals. Hospitals are often occupied or subject to battles between the various players in the macabre drama that plays out in Iraq every day. One woman was quoted as saying that when hospitals are occupied it is better to die at home with your family. Doctors themselves are often subject to interrogation themselves when US and Iraqi forces are looking for insurgents. They are also often forced to leave the hospital environment to treat insurgent leaders, if they refuse to do so they are killed. It is no wonder that half of Iraq's 34,000 doctors have left the country.
Is the surge going to work? Will it really matter? Do I really give a shit about military gains or losses when 80 percent of Iraqis have no access to sanitation and 70 percent have no reliable access to clean water? How patient can Iraqis be hoping for a day of peace when 21 percent of Iraqi children are chronically malnourished. How can they be engaged in political reconstruction and reconciliation when 43 percent of Iraqis live in absolute poverty on less than one dollar a day?
Where did all the money go? As Matt Taibbi chronicles in his excellent, angry, and searing indictment of how the contractors pissed your money away, the reconstruction did not get reconstructed. He reminds us that that we have spent 500 billion on the war and 44 billion on the reconstruction. Despite this the Iraqi people are suffering and the humanitarian consequences seem to be a footnote attached to the military goals. Yes, the contractors have fucked health care as well. The Basra Children's Hospital was built in an area without clean water. Bechtel was given 50 million to build it, they spend 169 million and were pulled off the project.
Imagine travelling to the hospital here in the US only to dodge bullets, you arrive at the hospital to find out there aren't any drugs for your infection. Imagine being told the surgeon who was to operate on you has been kidnapped or killed. Imagine deciding to just bleed to death at home surrounded by those you love because at least you might go out with a measure of peace. Imagine having no choices about your health. Imagine crossing your fingers every day, and I know many Americans do, that you don't get sick, because it might literally be a death sentence.
I am angry. I am ashamed. I am not numb. I do not mean to diminish the very real and tangible health care disasters ordinary Americans are subject to every day. I can't help but wonder if the hungry child today in Iraq will survive, and recall Americans as the people who came and couldn't turn on the electricity, who never offered fresh water, and never managed to get that hospital open. Then I wonder about the American boy or girl today who grows up in an honest hard working home unable to afford college who goes off to Iraq in ten or fifteen years and what will happen when they meet. They have common ground and yet they might never have the opportunity to discuss it.
We need to de-fund the occupation and deliver the goods on humanitarian needs without contractors and a new administration at the helm. Since the Iraqi people can't wait till 2008, let's start asking our reps what they have against clean water, hospitals, medical supplies and personnel, and why they think it is just fine and dandy to allow poverty and illness to be the defining characteristics of the new Iraq.