To help, the government provides the people with food baskets, but they do not begin to meet nutritional needs. It often will approve one part of an item but not the other, or the second part when the first has expired. This is an outrage. Now it has been reduced to third world status. The roofs of hospitals leak and hospital interiors are dingy for lack of soap and paint.
Basic equipment is old and falling apart.
At the Saddam Hussein Teaching Hospital only one of the four elevators works. Now the pipes are broken and there is no chlorine. Members of our group often were asked for medicine or money to buy black market medicine. At Baghdad's Red Crescent, we met a father who pleaded for money so his daughter could have an operation. Sadly, money would have been no guarantee.