Hepatitis spreads in 2 Iraqi districts
Collapse of water and sewage systems is believed to be at root of the illness
BAGHDAD A virulent form of hepatitis that is especially lethal for pregnant women has broken out in two of Iraq’s most troubled districts, Iraqi Health Ministry officials said in interviews here this week, and they warned that a collapse of water and sewage systems in the country is probably at the root of the illnesses.
The disease, called Hepatitis E, is caused by a virus that is often spread by sewage-contaminated drinking water.
The officials said that their limited ability to test for the virus had already been overwhelmed by the hepatitis outbreaks, suggesting that only a fraction of the actual cases have been diagnosed. But in Sadr City, a Baghdad slum that for months has been convulsed by gun battles between a local militia and American troops, as many as 155 cases have turned up.
The second outbreak is in Mahmudiya, a town 56 kilometers, or 35 miles, south of Baghdad that is known as much for its kidnappings and drive-by shootings as for its poverty, where 60 suspected cases have been seen. At least nine pregnant women are believed to have been infected, and one has died. There have been five reported deaths overall. “We are saying that the real number is greatly more than this, because the area is greatly underreported,” said Dr. Atta-alla Mekhlif al-Salmani, head of the viral hepatitis section at the Health Ministry’s Center of Disease Control.
The World Health Organization is rushing Hepatitis E testing kits, water purification tablets, informational brochures and other materials to Iraq to help with the outbreaks, said Dr. Naeema al-Gasseer, the health agency representative for Iraq and a UN health official, who is now based in Amman, Jordan.
But viral hepatitis comes in numerous forms, and another ominous set of statistics suggests that the quality of water supplies around the country has deteriorated since the American-led invasion last year, Salmani said. In 2003, there were 70 percent more cases of hepatitis of all types reported across Iraq than in the year before, he said.
During the first six months of 2004, there were as many cases as in all of 2002.
In yet another indication of the deteriorating safety of both water and food in Iraq, the number of reported cases of typhoid fever is up sharply this year, said Dr. Nima S. Abid, the ministry’s director general of public health and primary health. Hospitals across the country are also full of children with severe forms of diarrhea, Abid said.
The reports have come just as the Bush administration has proposed shifting $3.46 billion in reconstruction money for Iraq to programs that would train and equip tens of thousands of additional security forces. The training would include police officers, border guards and national guardsmen in hopes of regaining control of a security situation that has spiraled out of control. The shift would have to be approved by Congress.
The financing transfer would gut what had been an ambitious program to rebuild Iraq’s crumbling water and sewage systems, forcing the cancellation or delay of most of the projects that had been planned. Last autumn, Congress approved $18.4 billion for Iraq’s reconstruction. So far, only about $1 billion has been spent.
“The problem is the whole infrastructure,” Abid said of the mounting health problems. Abid added that many of them stemmed from neglect that began long before last year’s invasion. But he said: “Definitely no major intervention has been done in this last one and a half years to repair the problem.”
(read more in extended entry)
Torture and Rape Rampant in Iraq Prisons
HUNTINGTON WOODS, MICH. – American legal investigators have discovered evidence of abuse, torture and rape throughout the U.S.-run prison system in Iraq. A Michigan legal team meeting with former detainees in Baghdad during an August fact-finding mission gathered evidence supporting claims of prisoner abuse at some 25 U.S.-run detention centers, most of them so far not publicly mentioned as being embroiled in the Iraq torture scandal.
“That list was something that we came back with – we only knew of three prisons going there,” investigator Mohammed Alomari told The NewStandard, referring to the few detention centers in Iraq where concerns over treatment of prisoners have already been raised publicly.
The list includes some actual prisons, such as al-Salihiya Prison in Baghdad, the notorious prison in Abu Ghraib, and a prison at Camp Bucca, a Coalition-built POW camp in the southern port city of Um-Qasr. Other detention centers have been established at military bases, such as the U.S. military compound at al-Dhiloeia, north of Baghdad; a U.S. base outside Fallujah; and the Hilla military compound, a joint U.S.-Polish base where Alomari said he has recently been informed of allegations against U.S. and Polish personnel.
“Nobody talks about it. All everyone talks about is Abu Ghraib because of the pictures,” said Alomari. “But in these other places, there’s tons of acts of torture, abuse, rape.”
Radioactive material widespread in Iraq
BAGHDAD, 21 September (IRIN) – While the Coalition has not found any weapons of mass destruction, Iraq has lots of radioactive pollution, especially at a known nuclear research site, a new survey conducted by the Ministry of Environment shows.
Tuwaitha, some 18 km south of the capital, Baghdad, is a site of previous nuclear weapons research and experiments. It appears to have the highest ambient radiation in the country, Bushra Ali Ahmed, author of the radiation survey, told IRIN.
Residents of the area looted containers holding radioactive materials in the days immediately following the US-led invasion of Iraq in April 2003. They dumped the radioactive contents on the ground at the site and used the containers to carry water, milk and other household materials and foodstuffs.
US troops and nuclear organisation workers paid about 4,500 dinars (US $3) per container to buy them back in May. Officials at the time said they were not sure they had managed to get all of the containers back.
“This site was polluted by looting and destroying research materials,” Ahmed wrote in the survey. “We found a number of containers which had traces of radiation. We also found it in houses and villages nearby.”
At least four surrounding villages are contaminated, the report said. Ministry officials took 190 samples at Tuwaitha: 70 for soil, 50 for water, 50 for dairy milk and 20 for other environmental items.
In addition, more than 4,000 people in Tuwaitha were tested. Employees who worked in radiation-related fields were also monitored by officials for the survey, although no conclusions were drawn.
While no specific numbers are available in the secretive military industry ministry, an estimated 5,000 workers may have been exposed to various radioactive materials in recent years, according to Mohammed Abed Ali, a doctor at the Baghdad Radiation Hospital.
read more @ Electronic Iraq
Viral hepatitis comes in numerous forms and with a variety of different consequences, from benign to fatal. The most common type, Hepatitis A, can be spread from person to person or through contaminated water. Like all forms of the disease, it infects liver cells and can cause jaundice and other symptoms, but once a recovery is made there is often no permanent damage, said Dr. William Schaffner, chairman of the Department of Preventive Medicine at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee.
Hepatitis E is most dangerous for pregnant women, who can lose their unborn children and die from the disease, Schaffner said. The World Health Organization and other health agencies are currently battling large outbreaks of Hepatitis E among thousands of displaced people in the Darfur region of Sudan and among refugees across the border in Chad.
The immediate reason for the outbreaks in Sadr City and Mahmudiya appear to be easy to pin down, Abid said. The lack of infrastructure induces families to tap into water mains with improvised hoses, he said, citing his own visits to the communities. They then use small electric pumps to bring water into their homes.
But in these same communities, sewage either seeps from damaged pipes into the ground or runs freely in the streets. So, through cracks and holes in people’s hoses, sewage is sucked in too, becoming mixed with the drinking water and spreading the virus.
“The problem is that there is a leakage in the sewer system of Sadr,” said an assistant to the director general for water in the Baghdad municipality. “Our treatment plant produces water with WHO specifications,” said the assistant, who asked to be identified only as Khalid, “and our test records are very good.”
The assistant said that there had been a major water project under way for Sadr City, but that the dangerous security situation had made it impossible to proceed.