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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

IRAQ: IOM continues medical evacuation programme

AMMAN, 6 November 2003 (IRIN) - Despite the scaling down of staff inside Iraq, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) is continuing its medical evacuation programme from the country, having assisted 110 people to date.

"If anything our programme has just been slowed down but we are managing to continue," regional media and public information officer for IOM's Iraq operations, Adrian Sutton told IRIN in the Jordanian capital, Amman.

All UN international staff have been pulled out while a security review takes place in Iraq, following the 19 August truck bombing in which 23 people were killed. Many international NGO staff have also been temporarily relocated, most of them to Amman where they are continuing to work as best they can.

The project, under IOM's Medical Evacuation and Health Rehabilitation Programme for Iraq (MEHRPI) focuses on evacuation of sick and injured Iraqis needing specialised treatment. "The programme also looks to contribute to the reconstruction of the devastated Iraqi national health infrastructure," Sutton added.

Priority is given to patients where there is a clear and pressing need for that particular person to be taken outside of Iraq for treatment. "We deal with special cases and at the same time identify gaps in the developing infrastructure," he explained. Most of the cases so far were patients with congenital defects as well as mine victims.

One recent case was that of six-year-old Mohammed Faris Yaseen from Mosul in northern Iraq. He was playing in a street near a weapons cache when some discarded ordnance exploded. One of his hands was blown off, he had shrapnel wounds to his legs and eyes. Doctors in Mosul were unable to treat him effectively and so he was evacuated to Kuwait for surgery to save one of his eyes.

Supported by the Iraqi Ministry of Health, the Coalition Provisonal Authority (CPA) and the World Health Organisation (WHO), 730 cases have been referred to MEHRPI to date. Of this figure, some 350 have been identified as eligible for evacuation. "So far 110 patients have been evacuated to 11 countries since the end of May and 47 have already returned to Iraq," Sutton said.

The patients are transported by road into neighbouring countries and are then flown out to third countries where specialist medical assistance is available.In addition to the evacuations, IOM is also planning training for Iraqi doctors and nurses to be held soon in neighbouring Kuwait and is also assisting in the reconstruction of the burns ward at Basra General hospital in southern Iraq.

Themes: (IRIN) Children, (IRIN) Health & Nutrition

[ENDS]

This material comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this item, please retain this credit and disclaimer. Quotations or extracts should include attribution to the original sources. All materials copyright © UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2003