Iraq cholera epidemic worsens

Not only is Iraq an economic basket case, a humanitarian crisis, a failed state, and the source of 50,000 refugees a month, but now the collapsed health care system is struggling with a cholera epidemic from contaminated water supplies. Despite having nearly a month to deal with the epidemic, nothing has been done except to prevent chlorine supplies from reaching water-treatment facilities.

After more than four years of smiley-faced assessments, Iraq is even further from becoming the shining beacon of hope that the Decider predicted it would become. With reconstruction efforts showing little progress and egregious examples of fraud and mismanagement abounding, $12 billion a week has not even bought safe drinking water for the population.

And despite the dubious 'progress' we hear so much about, the numbers of internally-displaced Iraqis continue to rise, worsening the spread of cholera.

Cholera spreads in Iraq

People displaced by war spreading disease, officials fear

Sep 22, 2007 11:23 AM

The Associated Press and Reuters

BAGHDAD – A case of cholera has been confirmed in southern Iraq, a senior health official said today, raising fears the virulent water-borne disease is spreading through the country.

The vast majority of Iraq's 1,500 cases are in the north but cholera has been confirmed in Baghdad this week and now near Basra in the south.

Health Ministry Inspector-General Adil Muhsin told Reuters the latest case was a 7-month-old girl from Mudeyna, near Basra, who contracted the disease from drinking water.

Cholera, mainly transmitted through contaminated water and food, can cause death within hours from dehydration and kidney failure.

Ill-equipped medical facilities and hospitals will hamper efforts to rein in the outbreak around Kirkuk in the north, which the UN World Health Organisation describes as an epidemic.

About 75 percent of people infected with cholera do not develop any symptoms but the pathogens stay in their faeces for up to two weeks.

Earlier this week, a 25-year-old woman from western Baghdad was found to have cholera after she turned up at the hospital with a severe case of diarrhea, said Dr. Naeema al-Gasseer, the WHO representative in Iraq.

Cholera is a gastrointestinal disease that is typically spread by drinking contaminated water and can cause severe diarrhea that in extreme cases can lead to fatal dehydration. It broke out in mid-August but had been limited to northern Iraq.

Several suspected cases had been reported in Diyala province, north of Baghdad, but al-Gasseer said none of those had been confirmed.

The latest WHO report, dated Sept. 14, reported a total of 24,532 cases of people with symptoms of cholera such as diarrhea and vomiting in the northern provinces of Sulaimaniyah, Tamim and Irbil. It said 10 people have died — nine in Sulaimaniyah and one in Tamim.

Al-Gasseer said health authorities were concerned that the disease could be spread through the movement of people within Iraq's borders, which have seen hundreds of thousands of displaced people fleeing their homes because of the violence.

"We need to look at safe water, safe import of food, hygiene, the network of water and the network of sewage disposal,'' al-Gasseer said in a telephone interview.

She also said some 100,000 tons of chlorine were being held up at Iraq's border with Jordan apparently because of fears the chemical could be used in explosives. She urged authorities to release it for use in decontaminating water supplies.

Cholera outbreak in Iraq dramatically worsens

The military 'progress' in Iraq hasn't improved the standard of living there.
The water supplies are contaminated and only available for a few hours. Cholera is spread by unsanitary water, and is a cruel wasting disease that kills by dehydration which forces one to drink even more of the contaminated water. Most third-world countries (that don't get $2 billion a week poured into them) can at least provide clean water to population centres. Further, the fact that warnings were ignored of this beforehand doesn't make the U.S. look pro-active.
The problem comes down to an unstable electrical grid, which doesn't allow pumps or waste water treatment facilities to be online for very long.

While only 10 deaths have been reported, unchanged since I first commented on the situation, the number of those infected can now be estimated and that number is currently 16,000.

Ironically, it is the "irrelevant" and "outdated" UN that is the only one doing anything concrete about it. I expect that we will see this as a model for the remainder of Bush's Presidency; the UN picks up the pieces that occupation creates. Bush will squeeze whatever allies we have left dry to avoid the consequences of his actions at home.

story from AFP:

Cholera infects 16,000 people in northern Iraq: WHO

1 day ago

GENEVA (AFP) — The cholera outbreak in northern Iraq has infected some 16,000 people since late August, of whom at least 10 have died, the World Health Organisation said on Friday.

Since August 23, at least 6,000 people have been reported with diarrhoeal diseases in Sulaymaniyah province, almost 7,000 in Kirkuk province and at least 3,000 in Erbil province, WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib told journalists.

The outbreak has so far remained confined to the three northeastern provinces, which have a population of three million people.

A UN team is working on the ground to help Iraqi authorities fight the epidemic and inspect water sources in the affected areas since the end of August.

The source of the epidemic remains unclear but the WHO remains confident it can be brought under control, Chaib said.

Naeema Al-Gasseer, the WHO's representative in Iraq, warned however that delays in ensuring access to safe water, safe food and enhanced hygiene practices could all lead to the further spread of cholera.

Northern Iraq suffered an earlier cholera outbreak in 1999, while the disease struck the southern province of Basra shortly before the US-lead invasion of 2003.

"You've Got Cholera"

Due to the collapse of the Iraqi water delivery infrastructure, which after four years of effort is still a cruel joke, northern Iraq is now seeing a cholera outbreak. Once a modern, successful country, Iraq has now been "liberated" into a sorry state that makes many Third World countries look attractive. Lack of electricity means no power to pump the water or run the purification or sewage plants. Iraqis are drinking what could be classified as sewage, and not surprisingly, are getting sick.
The refugees, fleeing from the "success" in Baghdad, are the ones most susceptible to the cholera outbreak, due to the deplorable conditions they are forced to live in. While neocons and senior military commanders speak in bright tones about how the Iraqi provincial and federal government is "improving the lives of ordinary Iraqis", the truth is that millions are internally displaced and are left to fend for themselves. These are the ones who can't afford to join the 50,000 other Iraqis a month who flee the country's "progress".
Of course, warnings of the current crisis went unheeded by Iraqi officials, who are devoted to the sectarian political struggle, and also by the U.S. military, which is obsessed with Al-Qaeda to the exclusion of everything else.

Notice the anecdote in the article of the poor Iraqi woman who fled Baghdad after her child was kidnapped. Or the man who fled because sectarian militias threatened his life. These are the faces of "progress" in Baghdad, where the surge promised the most. Neocons, who profess such concern over the Iraqis should we withdraw, merely brush aside these stories of shattered lives and grim futures.


story from L.A. Times

Deadly cholera outbreak in north Iraq

SULAYMANIYA, IRAQ -- A cholera outbreak in northern Iraq, where thousands of people have sought refuge from sectarian violence, is overwhelming hospitals and has killed as many as 10 people, health officials said Friday.

The outbreak in Sulaymaniya and Kirkuk is seen as the latest example of the displacement and deterioration of living conditions caused by the Iraqi conflict.

The water-borne disease has struck more than 80 people in the two cities, which are about 100 miles apart, said Claire Hajaj of the U.N. Children's Fund, or Unicef. She said cholera had been confirmed as the cause of five deaths and was suspected in five others.

Local officials said more than 2,000 people had been affected.

Aid agencies had warned of the possibility of a cholera outbreak as blazing summer heat settled in Iraq, where the infrastructure is shattered by war and neglect. The disease tends to appear in the summer because, as the temperature rises, Iraq's chronic electricity shortages make it difficult to operate pumps at sewage and drinking-water treatment plants, which leaves many people without clean water.

That was evident Wednesday at a squalid encampment outside Sulaymaniya, where several hundred people live in makeshift tents that are little more than worn blankets draped over wooden frames. Girls and women lined up to fill containers from a tanker distributing water.

"We drink from this water, whether it's drinkable or not," Zahra Jabbar Kadhim said.

"In this tent, we bathe, cook and sleep," she said, pointing to the canvas she shares with her husband, Abdullah Ahmed, and four children.

Ahmed, a Sunni Arab, said they fled Baghdad after a Shiite militia threatened to kill him.

Lamia Karim Shaalan ended up at the camp after she sold everything she had, including her shop, to pay a $60,000 ransom to kidnappers who took her 10-year-old daughter in Baghdad's Dora neighborhood.

"We live in this handmade tent on the sand and in the middle of heat and snakes," she said.

A Shiite man whose wife gave birth in their tent a week ago said they fled to Sulaymaniya from the Sadiya neighborhood in southwest Baghdad seven months ago after Shiite militiamen discovered his wife was Sunni and ordered him to divorce her.

A nurse with the Kurdistan Health Organization, Abdul Karim, said the camp, which has neither garbage disposal nor a sewage system, is a breeding ground for disease.

The International Organization for Migration, in its latest assessment of Iraq's internal displacement problem, says that more than 70,000 Iraqis have fled to the northern region this year, most of them to escape violence. Such people increasingly are living in camps or camp-like settings because of the scarcity of affordable housing, it says.

In Kirkuk, Dr. Sabah Amin, director of the provincial health department, announced measures to curb the disease, including the closure of public swimming pools, a ban on street vendors selling food and drinks, and testing at ice and soft drink factories.

The number of patients arriving at health facilities with cholera symptoms, which include severe diarrhea, has increased to the point that hospitals have stopped testing everyone.

"They simply can't test them all," said Hajaj, of Unicef. "They're just assuming that if it looks like cholera, they have cholera."