Shatha Khalil *
In light of the enormous scientific and medical development witnessed by the world, Iraq is experiencing a clear decline in the health sector, which is an important sector that has a direct impact on the lives of ordinary citizens, especially that the country has been going through difficult conditions and waves of violence since 2003.
Most hospitals in the country suffer financial and administrative corruption, which has been reflected in the deterioration of conditions at all levels in terms of cleanliness and service provided to the patient, and it has helped the spread of many epidemics and diseases that have been disappeared from Iraq and the world for decades, but have reappeared in our country such as malaria, plague and cholera.
Iraq also suffers from poor infrastructure of health centers and public hospitals, and the lack of supervision and cleanliness, which led to more diseases and poor health services complained by the simple Iraqi citizen every day.
Most hospitals in Iraq suffer from poor care and attention to patients, including children, and lack of acute medicines, as well as the imposition of fees on the people who come to hospitals for treatment in return for poor service almost non-existent.
The financial control reports revealed that in 2017, pollution continued in hospitals, especially in operations Halls in most hospitals such as Ibn Baladi, Al Wasti, Imam Ali, Ibn Al Nafis, Zafaraniya and Sheikh Zayed.
It was reported that Ibn Al-Bitar Specialized Center Hospital suffers from poor radiation protection procedures, in the section of radiation, and lack of catheterization operations halls.
The reports said that the Kut hospital in the province of Wasit, lacks specialized committees to determine the need for oxygen, referring to the purchase of medical material by the hospital from the private factory for $ 10 million, without making any offers and this is contrary to the instructions.
As for the reports of Basra hospitals, the outbreak of sewage on the birth hall more than once, which led to pollution and increased the seriousness of the spread of diseases.
The financial control reports indicated that the Al-Nu’man General Hospital suffered in 2017 from the lack of nursing staff, lack of specialized doctors, the non-activation of the referral system, and the failure to allocate a dental chair in the dental consultation.
the reports added that Wassit hospitals are suffering from lack of medicines and lack of supervision, in which patients are exhausted physically, mentally and psychologically.
It also showed that government and private hospitals and health centers do not have a complete and centralized treatment unit for waste disposal, which poses a danger to the environment, including biological contaminants (bacteria, viruses) and chemical variables.
Biological pollution is a dangerous contaminant of humans as a result of the presence of visible and invisible living organisms, plant or animal such as bacteria, fungi and other organisms, in the environment such as water, air or soil, which cause diseases that are transmitted by food eaten by humans or by the water they drink or the air they breathe.
Biological contamination of water is caused by non-chemical treatment – before it is dumped in freshwater resources, or household rubbish is spread out on the streets without regard to health rules for collection, transportation and scientific disposal, or for leaving dead animals in the open or dumping them into water resources.
The administrative corruption is one of the most important problems facing the health sector in Iraq, where medical institutions are being destroyed by it, due to poor government control and cover up corruption, especially medicines that pose a health hazard. If you are not dead by explosions and improvised explosive devices, you will be dead by medicines and deadly injections , these words were said by simple citizen when his son died after an expired syringe in a hospital in a hospital in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, expressing the state of medicine in his country.
Iraqi and international studies have confirmed the increase in the incidence of serious diseases such as tumors, deformities, abortion and sterility due to the use of prohibited weapons of mass destruction in various parts of Iraq, heavy metals and environmental pollution, the failure of pharmaceutical policy and the lack of supervision and inspection of medicine and food and the deterioration of the pharmaceutical industry.
It also stressed that the major disaster in the medical sector is the transformation of professional medical work to the standards of sectarian affiliation and quotas, the policy of exclusion and marginalization of doctors, “reliance on non-professional cadres, scientifically in the management of hospitals and health centers, and the migration of distinguished medical talents and enlightened minds with great experience due to the sectarian war and fighting , or because of their displacement, physical targeting, and moral and material extortion, to expel and displace them.
New fees paid by the poor citizen in the wealthy country …
Citizens say that after more than 35 years of free state health care, government hospitals are now charging fees for health services, which has led to the spread of private clinics, unlicensed clinics, and even the impersonating a doctor, in order to earn money and use tricks on the law.
They add that the poor supervision of the Ministry of Health, especially on some doctors who “disassociated themselves from their humanity” made them not give the appropriate medicine in the first session “and sought to collect money at the expense of the poor Iraqi patient, noting that the value of medical examination has reached to more than sixty thousand Iraqi dinars (53) , this is high figure due to the hard life the country is going through , while the price of the drug is more than one hundred and fifty thousand Iraqi Dinars (about 120 dollars) and is exclusively from their pharmacies or pharmacies agreed upon in advance, because they write the prescription with its own symbols.
As the situation in Iraq is experiencing security and economic difficulties, there is a need for a plan based on an accurate vision in the decision-making, especially those relating to the fate of the people and their future, especially the health and therapeutic.
The MP for the Ahrar bloc, Awad al-Awadi indicated, in September 2017 to the disclosure of the Iraqi judiciary and the Integrity Commission many files of corruption in the Ministry of Health.
He also referred to the arrest of “the biggest gangs” that stole the funds of the Ministry of Health, and the referral of senior officials in the ministry to the courts, including the brother of the Minister of Health and commander of her body guards and staff of her office, for the seizure of more than 30 billion dinars and arrest orders were issued against employees , some of whom were arrested and in the jail ,and and the other part fled outside Iraq and the other part is trying to escape.
Al-Awadi called on the Prime Minister to accountable the health minister and all employees involved in stealing and falsifying records and taking over more than 30 billion dinars. More than one person has confessed to the integrity of Rusafa for fraud and theft.
He called on the Iraqi judiciary to “say the right word and not give the opportunity to the involved ones to escape because most of them escaped out of Iraq, Iraq, and they have arrest orders from the integrity of Hillah which have not been implemented since 2016 and do not know why.
In the same context, a member of the Parliamentary Integrity Committee Aqil al-Zubaidi said that since February 2016, and his committee began to audit files of corruption in the Ministry of Health, stressing that the Committee is continuing to open files of corruption in all ministries and bodies, noting that blackmail and exploitation of the weakness and ignorance of the citizen is very large, especially in the case of women’s diseases, and notes that in the event of any error as a result of medical negligence, we find that the affected citizen avoids the establishment of a lawsuit due to ignorance of the active laws stressing that many of the medical errors are settled through the boards of inquiry in which the maximum penalties are administrative rebuke, which disappears from the file of the doctor after a while, surprising the absence of the role of the Ministry of Health and the Medical Association of what is happening in the hospitals of the province.
A doctor at one of the primary health centers says that one of the most important factors that are supposed to be provided by the health centers in the districts and other areas , the provision of simple and medium medical services , which does not require a specialist, adding: Then cases that require services outside the capacity of the health center must be transferred according to official referral through immediate ambulance , he added : In this case, the momentum will be reduced on public hospitals, and the citizen’s troubles and material losses will be reduced .
He added that these centers mostly lack the necessary equipment, such as radiation and laboratory equipment, while suffering a severe shortage of medicines, which made the citizen heading to public hospitals, which are also facing the same problems.
And he calls for improving the services of government hospitals to activate the clinics located in all the province to provide the necessary medical and diagnostic equipment to receive patients and examine them and examine them so as not to be transferred to hospitals only in hard cases that are in dire need of staying.
He also calls for new hospitals commensurate with the size of population in order to alleviate overcrowding in hospitals existed for decades, increasing the possibility of caring for patients in need of care and health care more than it is today.
Economic Studies Unit
Rawabet Center for Research and Strategic studies