Brussels - On Monday June 16, MSF
opened a second primary health centre (PHC) in Al-Ma'amil, in the northeast
of Sadr city, in the poverty-stricken outskirts of Baghdad. The first clinic
was opened on June 6 and, highlighting the desperate need for medical care,
by the end of the first afternoon it had already carried out 138 consultations
and is currently conducting over 700 per week.
"The people living in this deprived
suburb, estimated to be around 300,000, are in a dire state," explains
recently returned head of Mission for Iraq, Pierre Boulet-Desbareau, "for
years this area of Baghdad has been used as a rubbish tip by the rest of
the city. Just as an example, during our assessments we discovered that
in one area over 10,000 people are living on a garbage dump in metallic
shacks. Access to medical care is virtually zero."
The 7-strong MSF team is supporting the nearby 300 bed Al Thawra hospital by training nurses in key areas such as administering injections, dressing and medical documentation.
With a population of around 2 million, Sadr City (formerly Saddam City), was largely neglected during the reign of Saddam Hussein. The area in which MSF is working is now categorised by the Iraqi Ministry of Health as posing the largest threat in terms of epidemic outbreaks in the whole of the country. As such, MSF is in the process of setting up a surveillance system across Sadr City in order to give early warning for outbreaks, as well as striving to bring better access to water to the population.
The extremely poor hygienic conditions and almost total lack of access to clean water are principal reasons for the high risk of epidemics. As Boulet-Desbareau explains, "many people get their water from wells that are so filthy that when you look down into them you see layers of garbage, built up over a period of years. And the water itself is green." The need for water has reached such grave levels that the population is now bursting holes in water pipes supplying central Baghdad as the only means of obtaining it.