While the health situation for Iraqi children remains perilous, reports from the ministry of health and environment indicate that the past year has witnessed an important drop in rates of disease among children under five, particularly for cholera and diarrhoea.
”Things are better now especially after we have received aid from international organisations to support child health and to rebuild our health infrastructure,” acting Minister of Health Nermeen Osman said.
The health ministry is currently implementing a new $3,5-million programme with help from the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) to decrease mortality rates among children by the end of next year, said ministry spokesperson Qasem al-Dulaimi.
The programme began last August and after one year in operation, the ministry reports impressive results but has yet to release numbers. Staff have been trained on the types of food and medication that can help malnourished children and prevent cholera and diarrhoea.
Reports by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and Unicef in July last year said that the health situation of children in Iraq was serious and a breakdown in social services was leading to illness among the young.
The issue of child mortality has long had a political element to it in Iraq, especially under the rule of Saddam Hussein during the period of UN sanctions on the country.
An August report by the ministry of health says that Saddam over-reported the number of children who died from 1992 to 2003 for political ends.
According to al-Dulaimi of the health ministry, the real figure for child mortality during the sanctions era was 870 240, rather than the three million reported by Saddam.
”Saddam Hussein used child mortality in a political game,” al-Dulaimi said.
The UN imposed sanctions on Iraq in 1991 after Saddam invaded Kuwait. A figure of 5 900 deaths of children under the age of five every month was reported by the old regime, according to local officials.
”It was an exaggerated number fabricated during Saddam Hussein’s rule for political gain to draw the international committee’s attention to the sanctions,” Osman noted.
The child mortality rate for under fives between 1989 and 2003 was 40 cases per every 1 000, according to another survey developed by the ministry of planning and development cooperation in partnership with the UN Development Programme and published in May this year.
In response to Saddam’s statistics, the WHO printed a report in 1995 showing an average of 4 500 deaths among children in the country every month.
But according to Unicef, reports during the last eight years of the sanctions showed that 500 000 children in that age group were registered dead, due to poor nutrition and bad health conditions.
Many children died from diarrhoea and cholera, caused by unsafe drinking water, along with other deadly diseases such as diphtheria and measles. — Irin