DATE=4/5/2000
TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT
TITLE=IRAQ / HEALTH (L ONLY)
NUMBER=2-260970
BYLINE=LISA SCHLEIN
DATELINE=GENEVA
CONTENT=
VOICED AT:
INTRO: Iraq's health minister says the U-N economic
embargo is devastating Iraq's health system and has
caused a serious deterioration in the well-being of
the Iraqi people. Lisa Schlein in Geneva reports the
Iraqi official calls the sanctions a violation of
human rights and has urged the U-N Human Rights
Commission to push for an end to the embargo.
TEXT: Iraqi health minister Oumid Midhat Mubarak says
there has been a dramatic change for the worse in the
health of the Iraqi people since the U-N embargo was
imposed nearly 10-years ago.
He says that before the embargo, Iraq's infant
mortality rate had been reduced to 42 for every one-
thousand live births. He says a recent report by the
U-N Children's Fund, UNICEF, shows the figure has more
than doubled.
He says the statistics on deaths of children under the
age of five are worse. He says before the embargo, an
average of 540 Iraqi children under age five died each
month. He says the number now is an average of eight-
thousand-500 child deaths each month.
/// MUBARAK ACT ///
The problem is not with the shortages of
medicine or appliances or instruments alone in
the hospitals, which are 30-thousand beds
distributed among Iraq without any
discrimination. What is important for us now is
to rehabilitate these hospitals. The memorandum
of understanding, which is called oil against
food and medicine, is not allowing us to
rehabilitate these hospitals.
/// END ACT ///
The U-N oil-for-food program allows Iraq to sell oil,
with money going for humanitarian programs and for
Gulf war reparations.
Mr. Mubarak accuses the United States and Britain of
denying or suspending contracts for the purchase of
essential equipment to repair hospitals, sewage
plants, and other facilities. The Iraqi health
minister says that as a result the number of
infectious diseases has been increasing, and diseases
which did not exist before the embargo are now
appearing.
He says an even more serious problem is the appearance
of illness linked to what he calls the use of depleted
uranium during the Gulf War.
/// MUBARAK ACT TWO ///
We are increasingly detecting cases of
leukemias, lymphomas, congenital abnormalities,
neuropathies, mylopathies, and unexplained
abortions with some other vague symptoms.
/// END ACT ///
Mr. Mubarak says Iraq depends on sophisticated
equipment from abroad to get its health and sanitation
facilities functioning. He says that if Iraq were to
get the money it needs to buy machines and parts, the
country would be able to rehabilitate its health
system within a matter of months, not years.
(SIGNED)
NEB/LS/JWH/RAE
05-Apr-2000 10:46 AM EDT (05-Apr-2000 1446 UTC)
NNNN
Source: Voice of America
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