ANTI-WAR = DEATH:

Perinatal mortality in Iraq more than tripled since sanctions (Roger Dobson, 3/08/03, British Medical Journal)

More than 3000 children are dying every week in Iraq as a result of the decade long embargo that was enforced on the country after its invasion of Kuwait, a new report says.

It puts the total increase in the number of children who have died as a result of the embargo at around 1.6 million since 1990, with year on year increases. [...]

The report, written by a paediatrician at the Saddam College of Medicine in Baghdad, adds, "In Iraq, social and economic circumstances have deteriorated, and in particular the health services; thus child mortality followed by infant mortality have increased." The report shows that in the first three months of last year the increase in the total number of child deaths put down to the embargo was in excess of 44, 000. [...]

Rosemary Hollis, director of the Middle East programme at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, one of the world?s leading centres for the analysis of international issues, criticised the balance of the article.

She said, "I don't think it washes to put all the blame on the Iraq government or to put it all on the sanctions themselves. It is miserable combination which is the result of disastrous policy failure.

"Unwittingly by setting up a sanction regime that was run through the Iraqi regime in terms of the food distribution, the UN Security Council cemented in power what had been a rather shaky government system."

Topple Saddam and the sanctions go away. Leave him there and they stay. You do the math. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 10, 2003 7:53 PM