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HEALTH: War Would Be 'Catastrophic' for Iraqi Children - Report
By Marty Logan
MONTREAL, Jan 30 (IPS) - War in Iraq would have devastating effects on the
country's 13 million children, many of whom are already malnourished and
living in ''great fear'' of another conflict, says the report of a
Canadian-led, fact-finding team released Thursday.
The document, based on a trip to Iraq Jan. 20-26 by 10 health experts,
concludes that, ''Iraqi children are at grave risk of starvation, disease,
death and psychological trauma''.
They ''are more vulnerable to the adverse effects of a new war than they
were before the Gulf War of 1991'' but ''the international community has at
present little capacity to respond to the harm that children will suffer by
a new war in Iraq'', it adds.
The report's authors, the International Study Team, call themselves an
''independent group of expert academics, researchers and practitioners
examining the humanitarian effects of military conflict on the civilian
population''.
They include experts in health, nutrition, child psychology and
emergency preparedness.
In 1991, they produced a report on the humanitarian impact of the Gulf
War, based on 9,000 interviews in 300 locations in Iraq.
The team's backers include War Child Canada, International Physicians
for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) and its Canadian affiliate
Physicians for Global Survival (PGS), Oxfam Canada, World Vision Canada and
the United Church.
The team says it received no financial assistance from the Iraqi
government during the trip.
The report's findings are based on data collected in three Iraqi cities
- Baghdad, Karbala and Basra - interviews with more than 100 families in
their homes and previous studies.
"While it is impossible to predict both the nature of any war and the
number of expected deaths and injuries, casualties among children will be
in the thousands, probably in the tens of thousands and possibly in the
hundreds of thousands," Canadian team leader and medical doctor Eric
Hoskins said in a statement.
The report says that Iraq currently has only one month's supply of food
and three months of medicine remaining.
Titled 'Our Common Responsibility: The Impact of a New War on Iraq
Children', the document presents findings on children's physical and mental
well being as well as on emergency preparedness in the country.
Weakened by the effects of war and more than a decade of economic
sanctions, 500,000 Iraqi children are malnourished, it says. For example,
the death rate of children under five years of age is already 2.5 times
greater than it was in 1990, before the Gulf War.
Because most of the country's 13 million children are dependent on food
distributed by the Government of Iraq, ''the disruption of this system by
war would have a devastating impact on children who already have a high
rate of malnutrition'', says the report.
It adds that only 60 percent of Iraqis have access to fresh water.
''Further disruption to these services, as occurred during the 1991 Gulf
War, would be catastrophic for Iraqi children.''
The team's two psychologists, Atle Dyregrov and Magne Raundalen, world
leaders in the impact of war on children, carried out what the report calls
the first-ever pre-war assessment of children's mental health.
''With war looming, Iraqi children are fearful, anxious and depressed,''
they found. ''Many have nightmares. And 40 percent do not think that life
is worth living.''
The finding ''is powerful evidence that the concern for children's
well-being needs to be considered in the decision making process about to
take place in the United Nations Security Council'', says the report, which
was released in Ottawa.
"As medical professionals, we call on all parties involved in the
conflict with Iraq to insure the safety of children and all innocent
civilians and to do everything humanly possible to resolve the conflict
peacefully," said IPPNW spokesman John Pastore in a statement.
The report points out that the United Nations estimates that, in the
event of war, as many as 500,000 Iraqis could require emergency medical
treatment but that hospitals and clinics will run out of medicines within
three to four weeks of the start of a conflict.
The report was also sent to the U.N. Security Council, the government of
Iraq, and the Canadian government. (END)
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