Story by SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN

Photography by JAMIE FRANCIS

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 5, 2000

BASRA, Iraq -- Here in the Basra Maternity and Pediatric Hospital, with its peeling paint and grimy walls, the motto could be "Getting by on what we have."

Disposable gloves are washed and used again. That increases the risk of tearing -- and spreading germs -- but gloves are in such short supply the hospital says it has no choice.

Cancer patients wait at the oncology clinic of Saddam Teaching Hospital in Basra. The man is a Gulf War veteran in the late stages of leukemia. His doctor has few options for treatment and blames depleted uranium.

Meanwhile, premature babies must breathe industrial-grade oxygen that is just 92 percent pure. The factory that produced oxygen for medical purposes was bombed during the 1991 Persian Gulf War and never repaired.

And nurses keep a close eye on one of the incubators used for premature infants. It is so unreliable the temperature can abruptly drop or soar.

"Everything we have is old," says Dr. Ali Faisal, the hospital's director. "We are functioning at only a small percent of our ability."

By all accounts, Iraq is suffering a humanitarian crisis that has taken a terrible toll, especially on the young. Children under 5 in heavily populated central and southern Iraq are dying at more than twice the rate they did 10 years ago, a level comparable to that in Haiti, UNICEF says.

Iraqi doctors say the number of babies with birth defects, like this infant in Basra with deformed limbs, has increased five-fold since the Gulf War.

Tens of thousands of other youngsters are so stunted by malnutrition that many 14-year-olds look like they're 8 or 9. Diseases once thought to have been eradicated are making a comeback, among them polio, cholera and meningitis.

Iraq blames the crisis on one thing: the economic sanctions that have been in place ever since it invaded Kuwait in 1990. Although Iraq is allowed to sell unlimited amounts of oil to buy food, medicine and other essentials, it says the committee that oversees the oil-for-food program often delays or turns down requests for things it desperately needs.

"You'll see children die because we don't have enough medicine to give them," says Dr. Ghanim al-Marsomi, director of the Saddam Central Teaching Hospital in Baghdad.

But those who work closely with the U.N. sanctions committee say it has a difficult job. It must distinguish legitimate humanitarian items from "dual use" ones that could be valuable in making chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

"The oil-for-food program has moved from an emergency program for food and medicine to where it's more or less a rehabilitation program for the entire economy," says Harry Verweij, spokesman for the Dutch ambassador to the U.N., the committee chairman.

"Iraq is actually working on great projects, grand projects where contracts sometimes come in for $90-million or more. These contracts are extremely complicated and where on the face of it a certain contract may not seem to be dual use, specific items might well be of dual-use nature."

Iraq complains, for example, that the committee has held up requests for laser eye-surgery machines and refrigeration equipment to keep blood cool.

But, as others note, lasers also have military applications. Refrigerators can be used to store chemical and biological agents used in warfare.

Even something as seemingly innocent as disposable gloves could be worn by workers in weapons-development labs.

At times, the fear of what could be converted to military use borders on the ludicrous, Iraqi officials say. A few years ago, the sanctions committee refused to let a big British pharmaceutical company sell Iraq a drug called Angised, used to treat angina in heart patients.

The reason: The tablets contain tiny amounts of nitroglycerin, an explosive.

Officials also complain that the committee drags its feet by making repeated requests for information.

"We wanted to buy 10 CT scan machines to use in teaching hospitals," says Dr. Kusai Al Keit, a director in Iraq's Ministry of Health.

"After two months (the committee) says, "Give us the names of the hospitals where they are going to be installed.' So we gave them that and two months later they say, "Can you tell us the names of the staff that's going to operate them.' How does it matter if it's me or Dr. Ali?"

Medical mysteries Is depleted uranium hurting the health of Iraqis and U.S. Gulf War veterans?

Months and months later, a few machines finally arrived.

"We're still waiting for the rest," Al Keit says.

The sanctions committee acknowledges it sometimes asks for more details, primarily to make sure the items are for the general population, not just the Iraqi elite. Hence a request for a liposuction machine, presumably to slim someone's bulging belly, got thumbs down.

The committee also holds up certain drugs because they are sold by companies that have repeatedly violated the sanctions, or are known to be fronts for the Iraqi government. Money from such sales goes directly to Saddam Hussein's regime to be used, it is suspected, for nefarious purposes.

As for Iraq's malnutrition problem, the government has largely itself to blame, a top U.S. representative to the United Nations charged in March.

"Iraq consistently under-orders foodstuffs and has never met the minimum calorie and protein targets set by the (United Nations) despite record-setting revenues" from oil sales, says James Cunningham, deputy permanent representative.

His statement was partly in response to accusations that the United States and Britain are the main culprits in Iraq's health care crisis. Of the 15 nations represented on the sanctions committee, they are the only ones that ever challenge Iraq's proposed purchases. That, defenders say, is because they have the technical expertise to do so.

"Credit is due to those delegations which possess both the required resources and the political will to scrutinize all contracts for dual-use potential," Dutch Ambassador Peter Van Walsum, chairman of the sanctions committee, told the United Nations this spring.

However, he admitted that the amount of contracts on hold -- $1.7-billion worth -- was "intolerably high." In response to criticism, the committee has shortened the time for reviewing contracts and expanded the list of items that can be sold without approval.

It has also allowed the sale of chlorine and other supplies that have military uses but also are essential for public health services like water purification.

Although the sanctions have been eased over the years -- and would be dropped if Iraq cooperated with weapons inspectors -- Iraqi officials say the effects already have been catastrophic.

"It will take years before we get back to the status we used to have before the sanctions," says Al Keit of the health ministry. "Iraq was one of the pioneers of health services in the region and to restore that situation will take a lot of time."

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