Lighting is dim, even in operating theaters, for lack of bulbs. Wards are cold. Pharmacies are nearly empty with only a minor fraction of needed medicines and medical supplies. 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 helped.
Death is omnipresent.
A young mother weeping in her bed whose infant had just died, an elderly diabetic - his feet bloated with open sores without adequate insulin for years, kwashiorkor and marasmus vitims living only a few days after admission. 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 hugh pharmaceutical plant at Samarra is producing at 10 percent of capacity because of the lack of raw materials, machine parts, and packaging materials.