December 30th - Some Stuff About Health
01 Jan 2004
Modified: 04:57:13 AM
Pollution, cancer and infectious diseases in different parts of Iraq. And petrol problems. Still.
Multiple trips in the lift between the first and ninth floors of the Ministry of Health seemed as good a place as any to spend the second last day of the year and there, by coincidence, I met Dr Bashar from Mosul in the north.

He wanted to know whether there were any international organisations that might be able to help with the infectious diseases, mainly tuberculosis and malaria, that are endemic there. The most recent statistics on prevalence are from 1997, indicating 150,000 people in the province were infected with one of the two conditions. He says they need statistics on the scale of the problem, to know whether, as he suspects, it’s getting worse.

They haven’t seen the increases in cancers experienced in the south and centre of the country, which he puts down to the much worse pollution down here. The north has not been contaminated with depleted uranium and experiences much less water pollution from irrigation. Agricultural chemicals enter the fresh water courses along the length of the rivers, which are the only source of water in the centre and south, whereas the north has other water sources like rainwater and freshwater streams from the mountains.

The higher rate of infectious diseases than the rest of the country he puts down to three things: lack of medical services, including doctors and vaccination; poverty, particularly the poor nutritional state of the majority of people, and traditions. For example in Sinjar, about 10km west of the city of Mosul, and throughout the province, a lot of the people are not Muslim or Christian but Yazidi. The women are afraid of needles, he said, of things going under the skin, so they refuse vaccinations. They’re a very closed society, Bashar says, so health education is difficult.

Dr Ali in the Taba Al Nawawi [Centre for Nuclear Medicine] explained that cancer treatment was long neglected in Iraq because there were few cases and it wasn’t a priority. After the huge increase over the last few years there’s an urgent need for radiotherapy machines and specialist teachers. There are only two cobalt machines for radiotherapy in the hospital, which is the main cancer treatment centre in the city. There are no linear accelerators. This will mean something to some readers. The point is there’s a 2-3 month wait for radiotherapy when you’re diagnosed with a brain tumour.

The assistant chief of the hospital, Dr Mahdi, explained that it was a combination of the restrictions imposed under the sanctions, political issues with the companies that manufacture the machinery and bureaucracy within the Iraqi government. Still, since the war, it is international organisations rather than the Ministry of Health which are supplying a lot of their needs.

Lest you should think I’ve developed an obsession with doctors, I was in Taba Al Nawawi doing some research for a doctor in the UK and in the Ministry of Health organising for the arrival of my clowns in a few days.

That’s also why I haven’t written much the last few days, because I’ve been chasing my tail trying to get everything ready, if it’s possible to call it chasing, when you’re immobile in traffic so much of the time. Things are bitty and there’s barely time to write. We moved house. Stuff keeps exploding, often in the area of the Sheraton hotel. Yesterday there was an explosive in a laptop computer outside the hotel. Yesterday and today there were explosions on Karrada.

The black market petrol sellers have become more discreet since the new 3-10 year jail sentences were announced. Now you drive to somewhere that you know, through the grapevine, might just have some spare. A child on the street interrupts his game of football to ask, “Banzeen?” Another brings a couple of containers over for scrutiny. Does it smell unadulterated? Does it smell like it isn’t going to destroy your engine? Where and how they got it you leave unasked.

If it smells OK (or not too bad, for petrol) then you drive into their driveway, agree a price and between them they produce more containers, fill the car and keep an eye open for trouble and then you go on your way, crawling through the quarter of the road that isn’t filled by the three-wide line of vehicles waiting for the tanker delivery.