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Iraq's failing health - Mayada, the GP

• Newsnight
• 19 Mar 07, 03:09 PM

For Newsnight's Window on Iraq - a series of audio, video and text blogs as part of our - Mayada, a Baghdad GP, explains how doctors are finding it increasingly difficult to deliver healthcare.

I am a GP at a health centre in one of Baghdad’s poorer districts. It is not an area you would choose to work in but I hold on to my position for two reasons. The first is I get on very well with my colleagues and the second is because the area is relatively safe – at least during office hours – and this makes all the difference between having to give up your job or being able to continue.

The situation for the staff and patients has deteriorated a lot over the last year and as a result the services we are able to offer have suffered. It was much better when I started work here three years ago.

For example the continued lack of electricity and the unavailability of fuel to run the generator means that we have great difficulty keeping vaccines from perishing because we can’t run our refrigerators. The ministry of health did provide us with the technical marvel that is a self-charging freezer but in order to charge it we need electricity for at least eight continuous hours. We barely get one hour a day. We have resorted to keeping vaccines in a kerosene operated fridges when we have fuel but in the extreme heat of the summer we have to turn away many mothers and children unvaccinated.

The very little electricity we get also means that our laboratory and radiology departments are closed most days.

Another problem we face is the lack of medicine at the health centre. Not because the ministry of health doesn’t have any but because of the fear of death. The centre can’t guarantee the safety of the pharmacy staff which is supposed to go collect the medicines for our health centre so our shelves stay empty.

This lack of basic services and security obviously effect our patients, we have a large catchment area servicing around 78 thousand patients. At least we are still offering treatment for pregnant mothers and children under 12 for free but if we don’t have medicines or the ability to run lab tests this free service is meaningless.

It is very difficult to explain to the mother of a sick child why there is no electricity to run the tests her child needs or why the pharmacy’s shelves are empty, for many mothers in this area going to private pharmacies is just not an option, they depend on the little the state offers. The physicians end up facing the cannon and taking all the blame for things we have no control over. Some days this burden gets too much and I can’t wait for the time I can go back home.

Another important activity that has gone missing the last few months is the weekly seminar in which we used to discuss various medical papers or research we have read or seen online, it is an attempt to keep ourselves up to date with the rest of the world. I don’t know what happened but it seems the difficult situation we are going through has dampened our enthusiasm for these activities.