"[Iraqis] have become more optimistic, and are increasingly energized," says David Tarantino, a US medical adviser to the new Iraqi Health Ministry, reports The Christian Science Monitor. First the good news:
On March 28, this Iraqi ministry became the first to be granted full control by US authorities, who celebrated its turnaround after "more than 30 years of neglect and isolation." Ministers now have control of eight of Iraq's 25 ministries, with more being transferred each week as officials gear up for the June 30 handover of sovereignty.
Jalal Abed Ali, a doctor at Al Kadhimiya, says he is optimistic, though he has yet to see much improvement. "I have a feeling inside that things are in the right hands, but it needs time," he says. "Germany took two years to reunify. Iraq needs more than that, because of physical and psychological damage."
During the Hussein era, he says, guards used to burn medical supplies, deliberately keeping national stocks low to highlight the negative aspects of UN sanctions. Storekeepers kept drugs until well past their expiry date.
Now the bad news. Where your average American doctor might worry about the extortionary cost of malpractice insurance, Iraqi physicians have to worry about physical extortion itself:
More challenging has been a surge in the past month in kidnappings of doctors and surgeons for ransom that is fueling fear about the future, and pressuring some simply to leave Iraq.
"All of us share the same experience of hating to be kidnapped," says one doctor who asked not to be named, speaking in his Baghdad clinic. Several colleagues have been kidnapped, terrorized, and squeezed for upward of $20,000. All paid; most have left -- an option this doctor never considered till now. "We are very soft targets," he says. "A patient enters your exam room, and while you examine them, their partner puts a gun to your head."
"There is no remedy," says [an anonymous] doctor. "The police are weak; the Americans are not stopping it -- they only protect themselves."
"Probably things will improve, but in the next year they will go from bad to worse. People think: If the Americans are here, and things are so weak, what will happen when they leave?"
That is a question that will dog Iraqis until July 1. "It's true there is occupation, but . . . we feel that better is coming," says Hamid al-Amiri, deputy director at Al Kadhimiya hospital. "It's the term 'occupation' we want to disappear. But we prefer occupation to Saddam Hussein."
[via RobA of Fine? Why Fine?]
Comments