BAGHDAD
- The Iraqi Ministry of Health is failing to provide
enough support to the hundreds of thousands of people
who fled Fallujah. Doctors in Baghdad are perplexed why
there has been little or no assistance from the Health
Ministry to residents or refugees.
"During the
Najaf fighting this summer things were not like this,"
says Dr Riad Hussein, a resident surgeon in Baghdad.
"There were mobile operating theaters and plenty of help
for them. But for Fallujah they have done next to
nothing. Why?"
The doctor said the decision
appeared to be political. "The minister of health is a
Shi'ite," he said. "And I'm not so sure he is motivated
to help a Sunni city like Fallujah."
Some
doctors said a deliberate decision had been taken not to
help people in the besieged city. "The Ministry of
Health instructed us not to provide aid for Fallujans,"
says Dr Aisha Mohammed from Baghdad. "But then they have
not done anything to help them during the siege, and
very little at the refugee camps in Baghdad."
Dr
Mohammed said she and several doctors from her hospital
had struggled to get supplies from the Ministry of
Health to refugees stranded in camps around Baghdad.
"Only when we fought them did they allow us to have some
supplies," she told Inter Press Service. "What they
eventually let us have after we demanded it, is still
not nearly enough for all of the camps. We are in a
crisis."
Abel Hamid Salim, spokesman for the
Iraqi Red Crescent (IRC) in Baghdad, told IPS that
"while the MOH [Ministry of Health] gave their approval
to transport aid to the refugees of Fallujah, they had
provided the IRC no support of materials". He said they
had no word yet when refugee families will be allowed to
return to Fallujah.
Musir Khasem Ali, who heads
the public relations department of the Health Ministry,
says there are more than 400,000 refugees from Fallujah.
He was unable to provide any details about how his
ministry was assisting the refugees, who now are spread
all over central Iraq.
Fellow Iraqis rather than
the government or even non-governmental organizations
are providing most of the aid the refugees need. The
ministry claims to have done what was necessary. "We
provided everything the refugees needed," says Shehab
Ahmed Jassim, who is in charge of managing the refugee
crisis for the Ministry of Health. "We sent 20
ambulances to the general hospital in Fallujah." But
none of these ambulances actually entered the city area.
The Fallujah general hospital remained a no-go zone for
people in the city trapped in their homes until very
recently.
The refugees meanwhile continue to
suffer. "We are aware that in the camps now there are
severe problems of diarrhea, colds, flu and lack of
electricity and clean water," Jassim said.
As
children at a refugee camp on the University of Baghdad
campus carried plates of rice from the small mosque
around which the camp is located into nearby tents, Um
Aziz, a mother of five small children said, "Even though
we don't have enough of anything, most of what we have
is coming from families, with not much from the Ministry
of Health."
Another refugee, Mohammed Abdel
Shukir, 43, said "last night I managed to cover myself
with five blankets, and I still shivered through the
night". Pointing to the tents around the mosque he said,
"Where can we go when the Americans have bombed our city
to the ground?"
Sheikh Abu Ahmed, another
refugee at the camp, said that Humvees carrying US
soldiers and members of the Iraqi National Guard had
come to search their camp for wounded fighters. "I told
them we had no wounded fighters, but they went tent to
tent and took their guns into the mosque," he said. "Of
course they found no one, but they terrorized children
and women. Is what they did to our city not enough for
them?"
