A Doctor's Day in Baghdad...Worse Than Miserable

[tpsbmam]

http://www.counterpunch.org/anon09232006.html

"It is Not a Miserable Life. It is Worse Then Miserable"
A Doctor's Day in Baghdad

By Dr. ANON

Baghdad.

<snip>

I have a big family. My eldest two are already dentists and both abroad. I have one daughter just married one month ago. so I am not yet a grandpa. Although I have perfect job satisfaction, Full Professor, with MRCP, FRCP and a couple more degrees from London and France, things are so unhappy here in Baghdad, there is no quality of life at all. There are no services: we are loaded with garbage, as it is not collected more than once every so many weeks, the garbage collectors are also afraid of being killed. We have almost no electricity, no fuel, bad water supply, and what's more you could get killed whether you are Shiite or Sunnite, if you fall in the wrong hands. I nearly got killed on several occasions, I cannot count the sheep sacrified for my safety till now.

As for our colleagues, nearly none is with me from our medical class, all have left the country, the last one two months ago, to Oman. The only one left with me is XXXXX, he is a physician in the department of Medicine

It is not a miserable life. If there is a grade more than miserable, then it will be ours!

He goes on to note:

-Most of the doctors work only about 9 hours a week now and have given up going to their clinics because of fear of being killed or abducted
-"Shopping" requires essentially marathon sprints to get what you need (implying you get what you need and get the hell out of there) and don't leave home unless they need to
-Buying gas requires buying it on the black market or lining up for hours and hours and hours

<snip>
A month ago, there were militia men with their guns, storming the dormitories of resident doctors in the medical city. They were particularly looking for doctors from Mosul or Anbar. There was a big fuss, and target doctors went into hidings, none was caught. Next day, two of them -- rheumatology post-graduates under my supervision -- asked me to give them leave to go to their hometowns and not be back except for their exams, and that even their training and teaching be taken there. I agreed, because they were leaving anyway. They would have been killed if they were caught, not because they have done any crime, but just because they are Sunni from Mosul and Anbar.

I believe that many doctors from southern parts of Iraq, who were Shiites, also left the dormitory on that day, because they feared that they are not safe anymore, and that next time it will be their turn, when maybe Sunni militia gunmen will come....

<snip>
The same applies for other hospitals, services are almost non-existant now.

<snip>

Attendance of patients to hospitals has dropped tremendously. We used to see an avrerage of 100 one hundred patients in our consultation clinic at Rheumatology every single day prior to 2003. We don't see more than twenty these days. Don't ask me where did the patients disappear to? Many are scared to leave their homes and go to the hospitals. The hospital used to provide medicines for the chronically ill, for diseases like rheumatoid arthritis. We used to have a monthly blood check followed by a month supply of DMRDs. These supplies are now so infrequent, blood checking is not done. Because services are so irregular, most patients got fed up and decided it is no more worth it to attend hospitals. Even simple NSAIDs most of the times are not available to patients coming for acute complaints.

[whistle]

1. Depleted uranium poisoning, phosphorous based WMDs, cluster

....bombs, hi-tech microwave weapons and God only knows what other monstrous methods of killing people the Bush/industrial/military fascist regime has cooked up and used in Iraq. It is worse than even Nazi Germany used.

[Karenina]

3. Is it GENOCIDE yet?

[Flying Dream Blues]

2. Excellent post...we need more info on how it really is in Iraq. K&R