The Independent follows up today on a dismaying report that appeared last weekend in the NYT (the latter of which I posted here at the time). Both articles are linked below. It's a horrifying situation that speaks for itself and that symbolizes the way in which a criminal invasion has been matched by criminal neglect.
Dying of neglect: the state of Iraq's children's hospitals
The wards are filthy, the sanitation shocking, the infections lethal. Sewage drips from the roof above cots of premature babies. This is the state of Baghdad's top children's hospital, 10 months after the fall of Saddam, reveals Justin Huggler
The Independent (UK)
21 February 2004
In Iraq's hospitals, children are dying because of shockingly poor sanitation and a shortage of medical equipment. In Baghdad's premier children's hospital, Al-Iskan, sewage drips from the roof of the premature babies' ward, leaking from waste pipes above.
Iraq's Hospitals in Ruins
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
New York Times
February 14, 2004
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 13 -- At Baghdad's Central Teaching Hospital for Children, gallons of raw sewage wash across the floors. The drinking water is contaminated. According to doctors, 80 percent of patients leave with infections they did not have when they arrived.