Nada Doumani, a Red Cross spokeswoman, sits in an upstairs room of the villa compound the relief agency uses as its headquarters, in the Park al Sadoon district in Baghdad, and confirms that there is a huge problem with the system of distribution of medicine and medical supplies -- but it's one the Red Cross can't solve.

"Kimadia went on strike for a long time. People are not getting salaries, are not feeling motivated. They have no referees, no directors appointed, no empowerment," Doumani says, to some extent confirming Fisher's take on the problem. Many hospitals, she says, "were so used to receiving allocations automatically that they don't think to ask, even if there's a shortage. It's a structural problem." The Red Cross, Doumani insists, is powerless to address the issue. "It has to be done by the Iraqis or by the occupying power," she says, and suggests we talk to someone in the Ministry of Health.

So we track down Saed Ishmail Hakki, an Iraqi-American professor from Tampa, Fla., who is rumored to be on the verge of appointment as the new minister of health. We find him sitting in a Health Ministry conference room full of smiling middle-aged Iraqi men holding résumés and letters of introduction. Hakki tells them there is an employment seminar on the lower floor and they file out. Once alone, Hakki explains his grand plan: He wants to create a healthcare system on par with the United States' within five years. That includes privatizing institutions like the Kimadia to make them more efficient. He calls the Kimadia a "billion-dollar white elephant."

Then we tell Hakki about the problems at Alwiya and Central Hospital, and he immediately switches modes. No longer is he an anti-Kimadia, pro-capitalist visionary, but a system apparatchik denying responsibility. "I would like to see a piece of paper that requested the medicine and was turned down and I'll give you a trip from here to wherever you want to go out of my own pocket."

What do we tell the doctors who say their patients are dying because they can't get needed drugs? we ask.

Hakki smiles. "Patience," he says, hanging on the last syllable so that it sounds like air slowly leaking from a balloon. "In the Quran it says Ini allahe ma'a al sa'abareen, 'God is with those who are patient.' We need patience here. The Iraqis are tolerant. They are patient now because they know -- otherwise you would have revolution."

But in fact, Iraqis are losing patience. Back at Alwiya, we meet Um Aisha Senan, an angular-faced woman in a blue hijab, who holds her sick 3-month-old daughter Aisha in her arms, because the cot is too filthy. She asks Dr. Al Douri why everything is dirty. There are puddles of fetid water under the cots and the smell of feces is overpowering. "There's no disinfectant! There's no janitor here!" she says. The other parents in the ward crowd around her and murmur in agreement.

"The janitor should clean it but perhaps if you cleaned your area and we all did our part ..." starts Al Douri.

"I am a school teacher," Senan yells, interrupting him. "And I do my job fine, that's why you and the cleaning staff should do yours! Look at this child!" Senan points to a boy on the cot next to hers. "It's a simple case of diarrhea and throwing up and there isn't any treatment and there are no drugs and he's getting worse!"

Al Douri tries to explain that the child has a fungal infection and has been here for a week. Even though they finally have ringer lactate, the child doesn't need it since too much fluid would cause heart failure. Senan and the others gathered around will have none of it.

After he hastily retreats from the ward, all the humor has drained from Al Douri's round, wide-eyed face. He says parents often take it out on him when things happen beyond his control, like a lack of medicine. He's been punched in the face before. But that's nothing, he says, compared to what parents would do if they found what's in his pocket. We ask him what he means, and he produces a folded-up paper. It's a copy of last week's Hawza, a Shiite paper that mentions him by name: "Dr. Al Douri, a Ba'ath party loyalist, doesn't do his work at Alwiya Hospital -- he shows up in his track clothes and upbraids the patients for betraying Saddam Hussein." Al Douri says he's no fan of the Ba'ath party -- he only shares a last name with an important, well-connected family. "This article is like a death sentence," he says. "Anyone will read this and try to kill me on the spot." He says he is leaving the hospital tomorrow and heading north to live with his family.

The last time we visit Alwiya, we go looking for Dr. Yassen. From an open door down a hall from us, we hear ungodly screams. Yassen is inside the room, his gloved fingers covered with blood. Below him, a newborn baby -- totally yellow in color -- writhes naked on a desk. Rammed into the baby's navel is a plastic tube, part of the defective transfusion set Yassen showed us on our earlier visit. The doctor is carefully watching the valve for bubbles as he releases blood into the tube. The baby has neonatal jaundice, Yassen says, and needs another transfusion after this one. Because of the shoddy Iranian sets, it takes him three hours to do what normally takes only one. He has another four hours of this maddening work and he already looks weary.

The infant arches its tiny body in pain. With little fists clenched, it rolls its eyes back and screams again, a gurgling, animal scream. Yassen's assistant finally puts a free finger in the baby's mouth to calm him.

After a long while, Yassen, sweating profusely, asks if we are finished with photographs. He has been sweltering in his lab coat, which he donned when we entered the stuffy room. We ask him who is responsible for the delivery of the medical supplies and drugs. Is it the medical staff, the director, the Ministry of Health staff, the government? He shrugs.

"I don't know where -- in which joint -- is the defect," Yassen says. "But you see and I see what is the end result," he says, waving his hands around the drab office and taking in the suffering infant. "We depend on the final result, and this is the final result."

Recent Stories