Health Care Progress Tough to Diagnose
Jan. 24, 2005 -- -- Health care remains a very tough area in which to gauge progress. Without question there is exponentially more money spent today on health care than there was during the final years of Saddam Hussein's rule. Whether this money is being efficiently spent or fairly distributed is open to debate.
There is something of a "he said, she said" in play on this issue between the nongovernmental organizations and the U.S. government. U.S. officials note that more resources are being plowed into building and supplying rural clinics, and that American-quality primary health-care clinics are being built throughout the country. NGOs say the American claims are exaggerated -- and point to several health-care indicators that suggest Iraqis have not benefited since Saddam's ouster.
NGOs and Iraqi health officials also note a spate of problems -- from hepatitis outbreaks to malnutrition, from shortages of supplies to the impact of poor security on actually getting sick people to hospitals -- to make their case that for all the infusions of cash and good will, little appears to have changed.
Anecdotally at least, it does appear that the north has seen the most improvement. More than two-thirds of respondents in the north told us they thought that health care was better today than during Saddam's time.
Two interesting notes:
We received anecdotal reports that Iraqi hospitals have been provided state-of-the-art equipment -- only to discover that their physicians do not know how to use it. Presumably this is a problem that can be rectified.
Separately, Iraq's Ministry of Health has pledged to combat the enormous black market for medicines in Iraq. No one can tell us -- as yet -- how precisely the ministry plans to do so.
Money spent on health care:
Prior to 2003: $16 million-$50 million per year
Budgeted for 2005: $1 billion
(Iraq Ministry of Health)
Doctors' salaries have increased up to 1,000 percent in some sectors.
Contractors plan to spend $786 million over the next year on health care.
(Iraq Ministry of Health)
More than 80 hospitals and 200 health clinics have been refurbished or rebuilt since the war. The Iraqi minister of health says that all the hospitals in Iraq require "critical rehabilitation."
(Iraq Ministry of Health)
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