Now the canals that made this port the Venice of the Middle East bubble green with raw sewage. The public water supply is contaminated with human waste. Electricity flickers off for hours every day, leaving precious food and medicine to spoil in the desert heat. There are not enough trucks to haul away the garbage that rots in the streets. Dysentery and gastroenteritis are epidemic.
Chronic malnutrition leaves children more vulnerable to pneumonia, bronchitis and other infections.
Polio and meningitis are making comebacks. Cholera and typhoid are thriving. We have had to go back to the textbooks to learn how we should treat them. Jawad's 320-bed hospital, the largest children's medical facility in southern Iraq, was among the best equipped in the country when it opened in 1986. It had CT scan and ultrasound machines, incubators to nurture premature babies and centrifuges to separate blood parts.