Fixing it will go beyond money:
Across Iraq, many hospitals have neither computers nor meaningful patient files. Working X-ray machines and MRI scanners are few and far between.At one of the busiest hospitals in Baghdad, five people die on average every day because medics and nurses don’t have the equipment to treat heart attacks and other commonplace ills and accidents, said Husam Abud, a doctor at al-Yarmouk Hospital. That equals more than 1,800 preventable deaths in a year in that hospital alone.
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{ 2 comments }
CJD is waiting for his Woody to subside then he’s stowing away on the next transport to Baghdad!
With the fall of Bagdad, the Iraqis went on a looting spree….
The hospitals were not exempt. Yes, they should have been guarded, but the Iraqis shouldn’t have stolen all the infrastructure, either.
So, where are they now? And until calm returns, sending more equipment, especially things like xray or CT scanners, is simply pointless: insurgents keep attacking infrastructure including power lines.
Iraq is such an awful place that the US and coalition forces prefer not to do any surgery there, if there is any way to avoid it: Accepting the increased morbidity of an evac flight to Germany. Iraq is simply a 7th century cesspool and until the Iraqis decide to join the rest of the world, it will remain so.
And yes, I have served there.
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