Iraqi medical system in deep trouble

updated 5:54 p.m. ET Feb. 18, 2008

BAGHDAD - Already a troubled system, Iraqi medical care has fallen to the brink of collapse since the U.S.-led invasion five years ago.

Scores of doctors have been slain, cancer patients have to hunt down their own drugs -- even IV fluid is in short supply. On Tuesday, a former deputy health minister and thehead of the ministry's security force will stand trial, a year after they were accused of letting Shiite death squads use ambulances and government hospitals to carry out kidnappings and killings.

Specialists are hard to find. At one point, Baghdad -- a city of more than 5 million -- had no neurosurgeon, said Dr. Hussein al-Hilli, director of the Ibn Albitar Hospital in Baghdad.

"This was something that was horrible because we had many head injuries, many spinal injuries," al-Hilli said. He described "big shortages of drugs, big shortages of everything" -- including IV fluid. "This simple thing, we don't have."

Like so many areas of life in Iraq, the health care crisis is vast and complex, and there is no quick solution to improve conditions for doctors and patients.

According to figures from the Iraqi Health Ministry released earlier this year, 618 medical employees, including 132 doctors, as well as medics and other health care workers, have been killed nationwide since 2003, among the professionals from many fields caught up in Iraq's sectarian violence.

Hundreds, possibly thousands, of other medical personnel are believed to have fled to Iraq's northern semiautonomous Kurdistan region and neighboring countries.

Even with the security gains of the past several months across Iraq, it is still dangerous for doctors and their families if they dare step out of heavily guarded hospital compounds.

Drugs supplies are so low that Iraqis hospitalized for illnesses as serious as cancer are asked to track down their own medicine.

"When we need medicine, we go directly to private pharmacies," said Ahmed Khalil, the 38-year-old owner of an auto repair shop in Fallujah. "We know we're not going to get any from Fallujah hospital."

Black-market drugs
And when pharmacy shelves are bare, Iraqis turn to the black market.

"Before the invasion, we got our share of medicine through government-owned medicine depots," said a Baghdad pharmacist, who spoke about on condition of anonymity because he feared reprisal. He said hospitals and clinics get some drugs from the medical depots, but it's rarely enough for the number of people in need.

"Sometimes we get medicine stolen by employees who work at the depots or at hospitals," he said.

At worst, the black-market drugs are dubious knockoffs, according to patients, doctors and pharmacists alike.

The war has taken a special toll on hospitals.

Fallujah, site of one of the deadliest battles between U.S. troops and militants west of Baghdad, is slowly rebuilding as violence ebbs, but memories of the danger are acute at the city's main hospital.

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