Health chiefs battle to bring back Iraqi doctors

updated 2:34 p.m. ET Sept. 7, 2008

BAGHDAD - A kidney specialist who fled Iraq's bombings, kidnappings and sectarian killings 20 months ago has reported back to work at his Baghdad hospital — one of some 800 doctors who have returned over the summer.

Doctors are just a tiny group among Iraq's more than 4 million refugees and displaced, but Iraq's health minister says their homecoming sends a message to other emigres that security has "improved dramatically."

Still, the nephrologist, who came back from Britain in July, remains cautious. He mostly sleeps at his workplace, Baghdad's Surgical Hospital, because he fears being attacked en route to his hometown, an insurgent stronghold north of Baghdad. He refused to give his name for publication because he still fears being targeted.

For every doctor who comes back, nine stay away.

Thousands left after invasion
Some 8,000 physicians, most of them specialists, have abandoned jobs at government health centers since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, most seeking refuge abroad and a few hundred heading to the relative safety of Iraq's Kurdish region. Many ran from a violent campaign by extremists and crime gangs that targeted Iraq's elite.

Their departure has further crippled a health care system plagued by corruption, mismanagement and a lack of equipment and drugs. Only four of 10 elevators work at the 17-story Surgical Hospital, and patients wait a month for root canal treatment at a Baghdad dental hospital because surgeons lack electricity and anesthetics.

Health Minister Dr. Salih al-Hasnawi said getting doctors back is key to turning the situation around. Al-Hasnawi has floated the idea of turning Baghdad's Medical City, a five-hospital complex near the Tigris River, into a safety zone for visiting emigre specialists.

He's even come up with a catchy name — the "White Zone" — similar to Baghdad's fortress-like "Green Zone" for international staff. Al-Hasnawi promoted the plan in a meeting in Jordan with Iraqi doctors.

"Our proposal is that the military can provide security for this complex, and we bring doctors from outside Iraq because it is a secure area," he said in an interview at the Rashid Hotel in the Green Zone, where he and other Iraqi Cabinet ministers still live for security reasons.

"This is a first step in bringing the doctors home," he said.

Nation needs 100,000 doctors
Iraq needs 100,000 doctors and has only 15,500, said Adel Muhsin, a top Health Ministry official. Egypt and Jordan, paupers compared to oil-rich Iraq, have almost four times as many — 24 per 10,000 residents to Iraq's six per 10,000.

Iraqi rheumatologist Dr. Muneeb al-Huwaish, who has settled in the Jordanian capital of Amman, said he likes the idea of the White Zone, but that it's not enough to lure him back.

"When you leave the hospital and go home, you don't know what will happen to you," said the 61-year-old, who fled Iraq in late 2004 after being seized by a dozen gunmen outside his Baghdad clinic. During a struggle, the abductors broke his right arm with a rifle butt, but released him five days later for $40,000 in ransom.

Al-Huwaish's experience isn't unusual.

In the past five years, Iraq's doctors, professionals and academics have been targeted by militants trying to widen chaos or by extortion gangs going after the wealthy. Since 2003, at least 620 medical professionals, including 134 doctors, have been killed and many more threatened.

"Simply, the goal is to destroy Iraq," Muhsin said.

MORE FROM CONFLICT IN IRAQ

Conflict in Iraq Section Front

Experts: Iraq invasion harmed Babylon Worst violence since U.S. pullback hits Iraq U.S. releases 5 Iranian officials in Iraq Army's new mission: To exit Iraq Conflict in Iraq Section Front   Add Conflict in Iraq headlines to your news reader: