Vienna_(dpa) _ More children than ever before are dying of diarrhoea-related diseases in the British-occupied Iraqi city of Basra, an Austrian aid worker said Tuesday.
Vienna physician Eva-Maria Hobiger, initiator of the medical aid project Aladin's Lamp for children with cancer, said the health system in Basra was in a grave crisis.
She said the health care situation in Basra was decimated by the international sanctions against the Saddam Hussein regime, but since the war the situation had become even worse.
Not even the most necessary items such as infusion solutions were available, and there was scant prospect of improvement, she said on Vienna's Radio Stephansdom, according to the Catholic press agency Kathpress.
Not a single medical consignment has reached children in Basra, she said, adding that "without Aladin's Lamp and our deliveries, the children would die."
The situation of water supplies in the city was also catastrophic, Many who survive diarrhoea-related diseases contracted from contaminated drinking water were severely undernourished.
For months, only 40 per cent of the water needs in the city of 700,000 people had been covered from the mains. The rest had been taken from the Shatt al-Arab, a river which besides bacteria carried huge quantities of poisonous substances, Hobiger said. dpa qu mga ds
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