| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"PagCal" |
| Date: |
09 May 2007 05:54:34 AM |
| Object: |
Iraqi infant mortality soars by 150 percent |
Iraqi infant mortality soars by 150 percent
By Bill Van Auken
9 May 2007
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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