Before the invasion there was cholera in Iraq but at a fairly low level: 30 cases a year reported or about one in a million population. Cholera is entirely preventable with clean water and easily treatable with oral rehydration therapy. But it can also kill a person in less than a day. The bug's toxin opens the floodgates in the intestines and the victim becomes rapidly and often fatally dehydrated. People alive and apparently well in the morning can be dead by nightfall. It is a frightening disease. There are now a reported 30,000 cases of diarrhea and 1500 confirmed diagnoses of cholera in northern Iraq. It has now reached Baghdad and is said to be already in the south, in Basra:
Health Ministry Inspector-General Adil Muhsin told Reuters the latest case was a 7-month-old girl from Mudeyna, near Basra, who contracted the disease from drinking water.[snip]
Ill-equipped medical facilities and hospitals will hamper efforts to rein in the outbreak around Kirkuk in the north, which the UN World Health Organisation describes as an epidemic.
[snip]
Earlier this week, a 25-year-old woman from western Baghdad was found to have cholera after she turned up at the hospital with a severe case of diarrhea, said Dr. Naeema al-Gasseer, the WHO epresentative in Iraq.
[snip]
Several suspected cases had been reported in Diyala province, north of Baghdad, but al-Gasseer said none of those had been confirmed.
The latest WHO report, dated Sept. 14, reported a total of 24,532 cases of people with symptoms of cholera such as diarrhea and vomiting in the northern provinces of Sulaimaniyah, Tamim and Irbil. It said 10 people have died - nine in Sulaimaniyah and one in Tamim.
Al-Gasseer said health authorities were concerned that the disease could be spread through the movement of people within Iraq's borders, which have seen hundreds of thousands of displaced people fleeing their homes because of the violence.
"We need to look at safe water, safe import of food, hygiene, the network of water and the network of sewage disposal,'' al-Gasseer said in a telephone interview.
She also said some 100,000 tons of chlorine were being held up at Iraq's border with Jordan apparently because of fears the chemical could be used in explosives. She urged authorities to release it for use in decontaminating water supplies. (Reuters)
We already warned this would happen. The breakdown in civil order and the collapse of the physical infrastructure are direct consequences of the US invasion. Americans don't want to take responsibility for this. They would rather blame someone else. But there is no one else to blame.
Most Americans now believe George Bush made a terrible blunder when he got the US involved in Iraq. It should be neither difficult nor illogical to see that one of the many tragic consequences of this blunder is a cholera epidemic.
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I'm surprised hat it took this long. I was expecting it right after the invasion when we shock and awed their water works back two hundred years.
John McK, it was a few wonths ago that insurgents started blowing up chlorine trucks as a poor man's chemical gas bomb. The result was that the US Authority no longer allow, chlorine trucks into the country. Consequence: cholera.
Who's to blame, the US or the insurgents ?
Approportioning blame is little comfort for the victims, as always.
_Arthur, why are insurgents blowing up trucks, and where did the insurgents come from?
Gosh, _Arthur, can I assume that if you were in a country occupied by an invading army, you would not resist them in some way? It is our presence in Iraq which created the insurgency. Can you not put yourself in the position of an Iraqi who wants the occupation forces out?
In any event, Colin Powell had it right when he warned W that the Pottery Barn Rule is in effect: you break it, you own it.
We dont own it any longer boys and girls. The Iraqi government is hold the shipment up. Dont you think that the US could fly that stuff all the way to friggin Baghdad 20 times over.
Only an idiot would think that we are the ones holding it up. It is the Iraqi governments problem now, at their request. So Iraqification is underway and their security forces are holding it up. Why? Well I hear its because they want to haul it in under escort this time and that too is their responsibility.
As for toys being broken. I think it was a good idea to take Saddam out, a bad idea though for post war planning and thats what the problems are. It wont make any difference if they ship it in Revere. There isnt enough electricity around the country to pump water, to put it into toilets and then have it flush and go to the electric powered sewer systems. That too is a part of the Iraqi program and they want to run it. We are out of the picture so let them. Sooner or later they will all settle down and get back to just hating each other. I will say this, screw the sewage system. Syria, Korea and the Iranians are trying to fit dirty nukes, Sarin and VX onto missiles. Those missiles are pointed at us in N. Iraq and Haifa, Tel Aviv. I dont think that sewage is going to be the problem here in about a month or two. They have used their erector sets and now we can see their toys from space.
Those toys are going to get broken and hard.
For once rather than rebuilding our enemies, let them rot in the sun and allow them to get a full understanding of what a war is and that includes our people. Want to end these problems? Drop a single 1000 pounder into the Iranian refineries each. War over and insurgency with it. It would bring them to a halt and their little programs with it.
Syria has everything to gain and nothing to lose by intimidation. This time around the Israelis wont screw around with them. They might not stop in Beirut this time around and go after Damascus and topple Assad.
It's also worth considering the hysteria over chlorine bombs, which has apparently led to a shortage of chlorine.
[A World Health Organization representative in Iraq] also said some 100,000 tons of chlorine were being held up at Iraq's border with Jordan, apparently because of fears the chemical could be used in explosives. She urged authorities to release it for use in decontaminating water supplies.
"Screw the sewage system," indeed.