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. The domestic industry provided 50 percent of Iraq's pharmaceutical needs before the sanctions, producing more than 250 different products. Today it produces less than five. Machines capable of producing tablets costing pennies which could save a child from dehydration stand idle, wrapped as if in burial shrouds for want of raw materials.
Polluted water is a threat everywhere.
Chlorine and other chemicals to make water safe for drinking are in short supply. In Basra, all the drinking water is trucked in for the city of nearly a million people and put into large tanks located in neighborhoods where people come for their home supply. In Baghdad, garbage disposal is severely limited because trucks which carried garbage away from the city are largely inoperable. Huge dumps are located within the city in or near residential areas so garbage can be carried there by the people. Often, however, garbage is simply dumped in the street where goats and little children scavenge together.