War in a Time of Cholera
Violence at Karbala, Baghdad, Falluja dogged the al-Maliki government on Monday, while the significance of the agreements reached by the presidential council on national reconciliation remained in doubt. Unless parliament passes them, they remain a dead letter. The Sunni Arabs continued to decline to rejoin al-Maliki's government.
Meanwhile, the public health crisis that is Iraq worsened over the weekend:
The USG Open Source Center translates a report on Kurdistan television on a cholera outbreak in Sulaymaniya. Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that there are fears of the disease spreading through the northern provinces.
Iraqi Kurdistan health minister announces five cholera deaths
Kurdistan Satellite TV
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Document Type: OSC Summary
Iraqi Kurdistan health minister announces five cholera deaths
The Kurdistan Region minister of health has announced, in a news conference, the death of five patients from cholera in the region, Kurdistan Democratic Party-run Kurdistan Satellite TV reported on 26 August.
The TV broadcast excerpts from a news conference by the regional minister of health, Ziryan Uthman, who announced the death of five people from cholera in the cities of Kirkuk and Sulaymaniyah. "There have been a few cases of diarrhoea recently in Kirkuk. There have been also about 2,000 cases of severe diarrhoea in Sulaymaniyah, and medical examinations showed that three of the cases in Sulaymaniyah were cholera cases. This means that most of the diarrhoea cases in Sulaymaniyah were cholera cases," the minister said.
He added: "We have requested assistance from the World Health Organization, the Red Cross, and the centre's Ministry of Health in Baghdad in fighting the disease."
The minister said that the casualties were all elderly people suffering from other diseases. He added that "there are about 150 to 200 (cholera) cases in Sulaymaniyah".
(Description of Source: Salah-al-Din Kurdistan Satellite TV in Sorani Kurdish -- Iraqi Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) satellite TV)
Labels: Iraq
posted by Juan Cole @ 8/28/2007 12:16:00 AM
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2 Comments:
From what I understand, cholera is a disease of failed public infrastructure. When your sewage and water systems work properly, you don't have cholera outbreaks.
Iraq from the 1950s onwards plowed money and indigenous engineering into infrastructure - my late father did his engineering practicum for the American University of Beirut in Iraq 50 years ago.
US bombs and destabilization have ruined Iraq's water and other public utilities, as well as decimated its professional class which had been completely competent to build, run and repair these systems for three generations.
THese cholera deaths must be counted as casualties of this war.
It's shocking. I am just disgusted and sickened.
This outbreak of cholera could be due to the lack of electricity within Kurdistan. The minister of electricity for the Regional Government (KRG) said that the state-owned national grid has been unable to meet local electricity needs. He said "for the past few years or the last three years, this ministry's budget was part of the federal ministry of electricity's budget. They did not construct and build one single important project in the region."
Kurdistan is of course relatively secure. Therefore the KRG has decided to act independently with a privately-financed power plant expected to be completed this year, and 3 more under construction. The KRG will initially pay for the electricity and then it's expected to eventually charge residents.
In Arbil, which is within the KRG, they apparently get about 8 hours of free electricity per day from the national power grid, however the Iraqi government has been blaming the KRG for refusing to provide electricity to Baghdad. Essentially Iraq's socialist government can't afford to provide all the free services, fuel subsides, etc. and even properly provision. Therefore the KRG may actually be leading the way for the rest of Iraq by saying the residents will have to pay.
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