Health chiefs battle to bring back Iraqi doctors

Physicians being kidnapped
In late August, an anesthesiologist, Dr. Tariq Qattan, was abducted in the northern city of Mosul. When his family couldn't pay $15,000, the kidnappers killed him and dumped his body in a street.

In Basra in southern Iraq, Dr. Khalid al-Mayahi, a neurosurgeon, was grabbed on his way home from work one evening in February, and his body was found in a street the next morning with three shots to the head. A colleague, neurophysiologist Dr. Wathib al-Amoud, said he later received text messages from the kidnappers saying al-Mayahi was killed because of alleged contacts with U.S. and British forces.

Under the previous health minister, militants even infiltrated the health care system.

The minister's deputy at the time was seen as loyal to anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, and some hospitals were transformed into bases for militiamen from al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia. Gunmen would seek out wounded Sunnis or attack Sunnis who claimed bodies of relatives at morgues.

During that time, as much as $1 billion in public medical supplies is believed to have been sold on the black market, according to congressional testimony earlier this year by a U.S. government watchdog.

The new minister, while acknowledging there has been some corruption in most Iraqi ministries, said he believes that figure is far too high. He said he's fighting corruption, including cracking down on counterfeit drugs, and that the supply of medication has improved in the past year.

Hospitals underequipped
Yet many hospitals remain underequipped and pharmacies understocked — a state of affairs Iraqis find difficult to accept, at a time when their government could end the year with an oil-fed $79 billion budget surplus.

"We have a lot of money. Why do we have a shortage of drugs?" said Dr. Saleh al-Jany, 35, an oral surgeon at a government-run dental hospital in Baghdad that lacks dental chairs and digital X-ray machines.

In the 16-bed intensive care unit of Baghdad's Surgical Hospital, department chief Dr. Waleed Ibraheem works long hours to make up for his missing colleagues.

"One day, we were actually just four doctors in this building because many doctors ran way because of the violence," said Ibraheem, 42, as he checked on a patient hooked up to a ventilator.

Ibraheem, a top anesthesiologist also threatened by militants, tries to prevent further defections by appealing to team spirit. "Usually, I tell my staff those patients could be one of our family," he said. "So if I run away, you run away, everyone runs away, who will treat them?"

In recent weeks, three doctors came back to the hospital, Ibraheem said. Those include the kidney specialist who returned from Britain.

Salaries increase to attract doctors
In 2005, gunmen abducted the specialist's brother and the ransom almost bankrupted the family. In early 2007, the lanky 40-year-old doctor fled Iraq because violence kept him housebound. He didn't find acceptable work in Jordan or Syria for a while, then tried his luck in Oman and Dubai but failed to get work visas.

After a two-month course in England, he came home in July, happy to be in familiar surroundings but still afraid. He goes to his hometown only once a week to reduce risk. "We live in a small city. Until now, I cannot walk in the city in which I was born because I am a doctor," he said, speaking in an office in the hospital.

As an incentive, the government has sharply increased doctors' salaries. Specialists now make $2,000 to $3,000 a month, while under Saddam Hussein's rule, doctors would earn as little as $30.

But some doctors may be gone for good.

Dr. Zaid al-Sharbaqi, 29, a general practitioner who left Baghdad in 2006, has settled in faraway Stockholm, studying Swedish in preparation for the local medical exams.

"I'm dreaming to go back to Iraq, but I think the situation is still dangerous for all Iraqis," he said. "Every day, I become more and more tired when I listen to the news."

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