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Reports From Iraq > Mon., Apr. 19, 2004
Drugs in Short Supply in Baghdad Hospitals
Dr. Safa Ali Hassan runs the pharmacy at Baghdad's Kindi
Teaching Hospital. He says the only drugs entering the
hospital come as aid from foreign governments and drug
companies. But Dr. Safa says a third of the donated drugs
are expired and have to be burned. He says another 40
percent come about to expire. He says those drugs have
to be burned. |
by Aaron Glantz
BAGHDAD, IRAQ -- A long line of patients snake towards to
door of the pharmacy at Yarmuk hospital in Baghdad's primarily
Sunni neighborhood, al-Monseur. A worried woman holds the
hand of her 21 year old son and clutches a small packet of
pills. Ten tablets of Thyroxin, enough for ten days. It's
the first time she's been able to find the drug in four months.
"He's been taking medicine since he was a child,"
she says. "But now there is no medicine. I don't know
what to do. If you doesn't get his medicine, he will lose
weight. He'll be in pain and his mind won't work properly.
"
On a visit to Yarmuk Hospital last month, George Bush's Health
and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said Iraqi Hospitals
would be fine if doctors only quote "cleaned the shit
off the walls." Small comfort for people looking for
medicine for their loved ones.
"During Saddam Hussein's time his medicine was not cut
off at all," the woman says. "Now its starting to
become rare."
It's not that times were good under Saddam Hussein, says
, Dr. Safa Ali Hassan who runs the pharmacy at Baghdad's Kindi
Teaching Hospital. Under United Nation's sanctions, imposed
after the 1991 Gulf War and rigidly enforced by America's
veto at the UN Security Council which blocked shipments of
necessary medicine. The United Nations Children's Program
estimates 5,000 children died every month during 13 years
of economic sanctions. But Dr. Safa says at least then there
was a system for importing drugs. Since the occupation, the
hospital hasn't received a single shipment of drugs from the
American Army or the Ministry of Health. He says, his hospital
needs more than 16-hundred vials of hydrocortisone but has
less than 50 vials in storage.
"We use a substitution for it," he explains. "Its
not effective. Sometimes its useless, but we can't say that
to a patient. If you say that to a patient you may have a
problem with him."
There are some drugs coming into the hospital, says Dr. Safa,
donated by foreign governments and drug companies. But Dr.
Safa says a third of the donated drugs are expired and have
to be burned. He says another 40 percent come about to expire.
He says those drugs have to be burned. But despite, some doctors
are happy.
"During the former regime we used to get expired drugs
and we had to sell them," says Dr. Hassen abdul-Manem,
who runs the retail pharmacy at Kindi hospital.
"It was a disaster," he adds. "If you were
supposed to take four or five pills a day you had to sell
20 because they were expired and you were forced to sell them.
You had no choice. Now you aren't forced to sell. You are
free to do whatever you want."
For the time being, though, that freedom only extends to
the right to burn expired drugs.
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