Maternal mortality rates have more than doubled, and 70 percent of Iraqi women suffer from anemia. Most of the leukemia increase is in southern Iraq where the bombing was heaviest. We visit a children's hospital in Baghdad. The familiar sight of skeletal-looking infants, racked with diseases that make it impossible for them to retain or digest nutrients are no longer evident. Such dying children still can be found in parts of Iraq but not at this hospital.
Shrouded mothers stand by the beds like mournful sentinels, their eyes filled with unspoken grief.
The journalists, photographers, and TV crews in our delegation descend upon these sad people, clicking and flashing away with that intrusive irreverence that is the press's modus operandi. A mother weeps quietly against the wall. The medical staff is overwhelmed. Some of the hospital rooms are lined with incubators that contain what look like premature births. These turn out to be infants who are the products of depleted uranium, born with serious deformities and malfunctions, urgently in need of surgical intervention.