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While economic sanctions were not meant to include food and medicine, they have effectively done so, according to health professionals in Iraq. In hospitals where children lie dying of malnutrition, mothers hovering over cribs hold out a hand when they see a foreign visitor and beg, "Haleeb, haleeb," (Milk, milk). Because the cash-starved government can no longer afford to subsidize the cost of imported baby formula and other staples, prices have skyrocketed. A can of Similac cost half a dinar ($1.50) before the war; now it costs 20 dinars.
One day's worth of formula for Fadhia's dying five-month-old daughter would cost more than her husband makes in a week. Qadissiya Hospital ran out two months ago, and the mothers are unable to breast-feed because they cannot find enough food for themselves. Fadhia and thousands of other indigents who live in the Baghdad slum known as Saddam City have taken to foraging alongside dogs and sheep, searching for food in the mounting piles of garbage that line every street. There has been no refuse pickup in the neighborhood in five months. Nor is there clean water. Sewage has backed up into the streets in greenish, foul-smelling pools.
Because of such conditions, the threat from dysentery, typhoid fever, cholera and other diseases brought on by consuming contaminated food and water is even greater than the threat of starvation. "Dysentery is the No. 1 killer in Iraq right now," says Arfan al-Hani, a suburban-Chicago cardiologist who led the Arab-American medical delegation. Hospitals across the country are admitting two to five times as many patients with gastroenteritis caused by waterborne infections as they did before the war. Some other infections, including salmonella and shigellosis, could be treated with simple antibiotics. But all the doctors can offer are sugar-water solutions, and so patients are dying.
Children are faring the worst. According to the Iraqi Red Crescent, 80% of all deaths since the cease-fire have been youngsters. A Harvard medical team that visited Iraq in late April estimated that 170,000 children will die of gastrointestinal disease complicated by malnutrition as a result of the war. Allied bombing of power stations caused the breakdown of the water- purification system.
Though the greatest suffering is among the poor, visiting doctors were shocked to see the reduced state of their own, mostly middle-class relatives, who must also scrounge for clean water and make do with rationed flour that is often cut with sawdust. "The children looked thinner," noted Chicago urologist Emil Totonchi, who also judged his brother, a Baghdad physician, to be "clinically depressed." Said Totonchi: "When I looked into the faces of my relatives, I saw there was something major lacking. I didn't see much of life or hope -- just bare existence projected so strongly."