Newsweek profiles the sad state of health care in Iraq, where doctors have fled in droves:
The medical profession in particular has been hollowed out. Iraq’s health-care system used to be the envy of the Arab world. Even in the 1990s, when sanctions and Saddam Hussein’s worsening misrule crippled much of the country, people came from all over the region to study medicine or seek treatment. But after the U.S. invasion, doctors became targets for ransom kidnappings and assassination. Upwards of 120 physicians were killed. Some were gunned down in their own clinics. Things got worse than ever after 2005, when loyalists of the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr gained control of the Health Ministry. Hospitals turned into Shiite militia bases where Sunnis could be killed on sight.
Can the oil-rich country lure physicians back with promises of money, free land and most importantly, security?
Related posts:
- Why Americans fear radical health care reform
- Do we almost have universal health care already?
- Should primary care doctors embrace retail clinics?
- A Canadian speaks: "Americans are lucky to have their current health care system, and should do everything in their power to preserve it"
- Will technology kill health care?
- Iraq vets will overwhelm the VA
- Why hasn’t health care collapsed yet?
KevinMD.com on Facebook
{ 1 comment }
Professional medical services, like all of the other benefits of civilization, will return when the barbarism has been supressed long enough for a reasonable confidence that it will stay at bay to emerge. However given the capacity demostrated in that society for politco-religious disagreements to elicit the most unthinkable sorts of cruelty that the most depraved minds can imagine–and knowing that most of the actor are walking about–means it will be a very long time.
Comments on this entry are closed.