Wards are cold. Pharmacies are nearly empty with only a minor fraction of needed medicines and medical supplies. Simple needs like sheets, pillows, pillow cases, towels, bandages, cotton balls, adhesive tape, antiseptic cleaning liquids are unavailable or scarce. Surgery is at levels below 10 percent of the 1989 numbers in all ten hospitals. Occupancy is below 50 percent in all the hospitals, despite the far greater need, because only a few can be helped.
Death is omnipresent.
In the emergency unit in Nasiriya we saw typhoid fever, dehydration, victims wasting because of the lack of simple medicines, a new meningitis admission as we left. Doctors, nurses, and staff struggle courageously and creatively against all odds to save life and resist despair and fury. Over 25 percent are dangerously underweight at birth. The huge pharmaceutical plant at Samarra is producing at 10 percent of capacity because of the lack of raw materials, machine parts, and packaging materials. Skilled production workers sit idle in their units, or hand wash disposable bottles gathered from hospitals and clinics throughout the country.