The following is an archived copy of a message sent to a Discussion List run by the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq.
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Dear List, James Rubin of the US State Department likes to spin the yarn, "Our sense is that, prior to the sanctions, there were serious poverty and health problems in Iraq." In fact, before 1990, Iraq was a welfare state such as the US has never known: free education (down to school lunch), excellent free health system, pampered healthy children. I found a WHO report (longish) from March 1996, which does an excellent comparison - in sober language. Title: "The Health Conditions of the Population in Iraq since the Gulf Crisis" http://www.who.int/disasters/repo/5249.html Here are the last two paragraphs: [...] "7. Very rarely has the impact of sanctions on millions of people been documented. Severe economic hardship, a semi- starvation diet, high levels of disease, scarcity of essential drugs and, above all, the psycho-social trauma and anguish of a bleak future, have led to numerous families being broken up leading to distortions in social norms." "8. The impact of this unfortunate situation on the infant and child population in particular in Iraq needs special attention. It is not only the data on morbidity and mortality that tell the story, but equally important are the crippling effects of many of these morbidities which are often forgotten. The psychological trauma of the six- week 1991 war and the terrible hardships enduring with the sanctions since then, can be expected to leave indelible marks on the mental health and behavioural patterns of these children when they grow to adulthood. This tragic aspect of the impact of the war and conditions surrounding the sanctions is rarely articulated, but the world community should seriously consider the implications of an entire generation of children growing up with such traumatized mental handicaps, if of course, they survive at all." --Elga _______________________________________________ Sent via the discussion list of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk