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Kirkuk hospital staff soldier on
19.9.2007
By an IWPR reporter in Kirkuk (ICR No. 233, 19-Sep-07)
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Hard-pressed doctors at province’s only hospital
treat up to 500 patients a day - even more when the
bombs strike.
September
19, 2007
Kirkuk's public hospital, built under the British
mandate in the 1940s, resembles a decrepit castle.
Heat and humidity have swept away the colour of the
walls, which are crumbling and spattered with blood.
Patients and doctors say the province's main public
hospital is unsanitary, ill-equipped and
overcrowded. Yet the facility is practically all
that Kirkuk has in the way of state medical
provision.
The facility receives about 80 per cent of patients
in the province, or about 500 patients per day. Most
days, five to ten surgeries are conducted, but when
the bombs strike, victims come through the emergency
department by the dozens.
"It's not an exaggeration to say that healthcare in
Kirkuk is in a crisis," said Dr Nabil Sabir, a
gastroenterologist. "It's getting worse and needs to
be addressed immediately."
The problems stem primarily from Kirkuk's poor
financial and medical resources. Despite the city’s
vast, untapped oil wealth - the province is believed
to hold 60 per cent of Iraq's oil - poverty is
prevalent, and public services are limited.
Iraq's healthcare system began severely
deteriorating under the United Nations-imposed
sanctions in the 1990s and has only become worse
since that time.
The hospital and other public health services in
Kirkuk are further strained by the increasing
violence and the growing number of displaced people
who have come here from more troubled parts of the
country.
Despite the pressures on the hospital, the central
authorities are slow to provide supplies of
medicines and it has to rely on support from aid
agencies, such as the International Committee of the
Red Cross, in emergencies.
The United States military has sought to alleviate
some of the problems by supplying basics such as
intravenous bags and burn blankets, so too has the
Kurdistan Regional Government, which hopes to
incorporate Kirkuk into Iraqi Kurdistan.
But what’s provided does little to address the
hospital’s needs - as a result of which many of the
poor in the province, particularly the displaced, go
without care.
"No supplies," said Khadija Hama-Rashid, a nurse who
manages the hospital's operation room. “That's why
we only treat emergency cases.”
Nadhim Jihad, manager of the hospital’s warehouse
where medicine and other supplies are stocked,
reports that the hospital only has 20 per cent of
the resources it needs.
The Kirkuk directorate of health estimates that the
province as a whole receives 60 per cent of the
medical supplies required by the hospital and other
public clinics.
"We send patients' family to get drugs from the
markets," said Mustafa Hussein, director of the
intensive care unit in the hospital.
Murad al-Salihi, the hospital's deputy director,
said demand for drugs and other supplies has soared
as violence has spiralled. Medical staff have had to
treat dozens of serious injuries in the aftermath of
devastating bomb attacks, yet central government
rarely sends enough supplies - and those that it
dispatches are vulnerable to sabotage by insurgents.
“Trucks transport drugs and [other] supplies that we
cannot receive by air, and they are frequently
attacked [on the trip from Baghdad]," said Salihi.
"It's a difficult process.”
As if this wasn’t bad enough, staff also have to
cope with the aging building’s poor facilities and
inadequate equipment. The hospital, which was built
in the 1940s, needs a complete internal and external
renovation. Available medical technology is outdated
- x-ray machines are over 30 years old. The only
advanced piece of equipment is a CT scanner - but
that broke down last year and has not been replaced.
Ilham Ali, a gynaecologist and the department's
supervisor, said his unit simply can’t deal with all
the cases it receives, “We don't have enough beds or
other supplies like air conditioners and water
coolers."
The US and Iraqi authorities recognised shortly
after Saddam Hussein's fall from power in April 2003
that Kirkuk's healthcare system was in trouble, but
little has been done to support it.
Both pledged to improve medical service provision,
with US engineers in 2004 assigned to build at least
five clinics. But a report last year by the US
Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction
said that the clinics "were found to be far from
complete and were poorly constructed".
iwpr net
* Kirkuk city is a Kurdistani city and it lies just
south border of the Kurdistan autonomous region and
it is not under the full control of Kurdistan
Regional Government administration, its population
is a mix of majority Kurds and minority of Arabs,
Turkmen.
The former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein forced
over 250,000 Kurdish residents to give up their
homes to Arabs in the 1970s, to "Arabize" the city
and the region's oil industry.
Based on Iraq's Constitution a referendum is to be
held in late 2007 to decide whether the oil-rich
Kurdish province should be annexed to the safe
semiautonomous Kurdistan region in Iraq's north.
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