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View Full Version : Iraqi infant mortality soars by 150 percent—a ****ing revelation of



جوري
05-09-2007, 05:59 PM
Iraqi infant mortality soars by 150 percent—a ****ing revelation of
US war crimes
By Bill Van Auken
9 May 2007
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The infant mortality rate in Iraq has increased by a shocking 150
percent since 1990—the highest such increase recorded for any country
in the world—according to an annual report issued by the child
advocacy group, Save the Children.

According to the report, in 2005, the last year for which reliable
data is available, one in eight Iraqi children—122,000 in all—died
before reaching their fifth birthday. More than half of these deaths
were recorded among new-born infants, with pneumonia and diarrhea
claiming the greatest toll among Iraqi babies.

The infant mortality rate has long been considered one of the key
measures of societal progress and wellbeing. The astounding figures
recorded in Iraq are an accurate reflection of the social devastation
wrought both by the US invasion of 2003 and more than a decade of US-
backed economic sanctions that preceded it.

"Conservative estimates place increases in infant mortality following
the 2003 invasion of Iraq at 37 percent," according to the Save the
Children report. The implications of such a change—in the space of
just two years—are staggering. Given the steady escalation of the
armed conflict in Iraq and the continued deterioration of social
conditions for masses of people in the country, the rate of increase
in infant and child deaths was no doubt even greater over the course
of 2006.

The report blamed the horrific decline in infant and child health
since the invasion on the steadily worsening living conditions for
the Iraqi population as a whole, including "electricity shortages,
insufficient clean water, deteriorating health services and soaring
inflation."

This overall destruction of basic social infrastructure unleashed by
the US invasion and occupation has been translated into a horrendous
decline in child health. "Only 35 percent of Iraqi children are fully
immunized, and more than one-fifth (21 percent) are severely or
moderately stunted" as a result of malnutrition, the study found.

The statistics compiled by Save the Children indicate that in 1990
the mortality rate for children under five in Iraq stood at 50 for
every 1,000 live births—among the best outcomes reported for the
entire Arab world at the time. In 2005, the figure was 125 per 1,000
live births—roughly equivalent to the figures recorded in countries
like Malawi, Mauritania, Uganda and Haiti.

While some countries—all with one exception in Africa—have higher
death rates than Iraq, none came even near the rate of increase in
infant mortality recorded by the US-occupied country (Botswana came
closest, with a 107 percent rise, while still recording a slightly
lower rate of 120 deaths per 1,000 live births).

The destruction of the conditions and very lives of Iraqi children
began well before US troops invaded the country in 2003. The 1990-
1991 Gulf War saw more than 90,000 tons of US bombs and missiles
dropped on Iraq, smashing much of its essential infrastructure,
including power plants and water and sanitation systems and creating
the conditions for a public health disaster.

The war was followed by a decade of punishing sanctions that deprived
Iraqi children and the population as a whole of essential medical
supplies and adequate nutrition. Even chlorine, needed to purify
water, was embargoed, depriving infants and small children of a clean
water supply and condemning many to death.

US-backed sanctions killed 500,000 Iraqi children

It was during this period that the United Nations Children's Fund
(UNICEF) estimated that an additional half a million Iraqi children
had died between 1991 and 1998 as a result of the sanctions.

In 1998, the coordinator of United Nation humanitarian operations in
Iraq, Denis Halliday, resigned in protest calling the sanctions a
form of "genocide" and "a deliberate policy to destroy the people of
Iraq." Halliday said at the time, "We are in the process of
destroying an entire society. It is as simple and terrifying as that.
It is illegal and immoral."

President Bill Clinton's Secretary of State Madeleine Albright,
confronted in a television interview with the UN estimate of 500,000
children having died as a result of the US-backed sanctions, famously
answered, "We think the price is worth it."

The rise in infant mortality rates represents the starkest
manifestation of the murderous impact that US aggression upon Iraq
and its children over a protracted period. But there are many other
indications that for those who survive, conditions of life have
become increasingly unbearable.

According to figures reported by the Iraqi government, some 900,000
children have been left orphans by the carnage that has swept Iraq
since the US invasion of 2003. It is estimated that at the present
levels of violence, some 400 children are left orphaned every day in
the country.

The Iraqi Ministry of Education, meanwhile, estimates that barely 30
percent the country's 3.5 million elementary school children are
attending classes, a sharp decline from 75 percent last year. A study
sponsored by the World Health Organization in the Iraqi city of
Mosul, found fully 30 percent of school children surveyed suffering
from posttraumatic stress disorder.

Significantly, the other country that is presently occupied by the US
military and remains the scene of a bitter counterinsurgency war—
Afghanistan—ranks as the second worst in the world in terms of its
infant mortality rate, with 257 deaths for every 1,000 live births.
In other words, more than one out of four Afghan children dies before
the age of five. On average, every Afghan mother sees two of her
children die as infants, while one in six women die in childbirth.

According to the Save the Children study, 40 percent of Afghan
children are malnourished and less than half have access to safe
water. The report also notes that, while "1 child in 100,000 in the
United States dies of pneumonia each year, roughly 1 in 15" dies of
the disease in Afghanistan.

On a world scale, Save the Children reports, "Every year, more than
10 million children die before they reach the age of 5, most from
preventable causes and almost all in poor countries." It adds that
while infant global infant mortality rates had improved in previous
decades, "rates of progress are slowing and in many countries, child
death rates are getting worse."

The organization insists that available and low-cost solutions could
easily prevent 6 million of these deaths annually. These
include, "skilled care at childbirth, breastfeeding, measles
immunization, oral rehydration therapy for diarrhea and medical care
for pneumonia." But for many of the most impoverished countries, and
for many others in the most oppressed layers of society elsewhere,
these elementary forms of health care and education are not provided.

The statistics included in the report also indicate that the problems
of infant mortality reflect the worldwide growth of social
inequality, which is literally killing millions of children every
year.

"A child in the poorest fifth of a population is more than twice as
likely to die compared to a child from the richest fifth," the study
finds. "Eliminating health-care inequities—and bringing mortality
rates among the poorest 80 percent of the population down to those
prevailing among the richest 20 percent—would prevent about 4 million
of the 10 million deaths each year."

In addition to the growing impact of social inequality within each
country, the gap between the wealthiest and most impoverished
countries has also continued to widen. While in 1990, the child
mortality rate for sub-Saharan Africa was 20 times higher than for
the industrialized countries, by 2005, the rate was 28 times as high,
the study said.

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