Regional Reports

Regional Reports

Iraq


	Iraq Report - On the road to recovery (Jan 2012) After years of devastating war, Iraq’s healthcare infrastructure was broken. Current health indicators, when compared to the relatively advanced state of healthcare the country enjoyed in the 1980s, are shocking and point to the dire state of healthcare in the country.

	Iraq - A bad place for children (Sep 2011) Decades of war and international sanctions have turned Iraq into one of the worst places for children in the Middle East and North Africa, with around 3.5 million living in poverty, 1.5 million under the age of five undernourished and 100 infants dying every day, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warns.

	Iraq Report - Hard health for women Accessing good health care in Iraq is a challenge for many people, as it is in most developing countries, however, women in particular face unique hardships when seeking healthcare in this war-torn nation.

	Iraq Report - War remnants, pollution behind rise in cancer deaths? In the late 1990s 22-year-old Manal Sabir Abdullah from Basra was diagnosed with lung cancer, from which she eventually died in 2004.

	HIV-positive people face social isolation Wife and now widow Hana’a Khalil fainted when a doctor at one of Baghdad’s hospitals told her in the late 1990s she had contracted HIV. When she came to she could not take in what the doctor was telling her.

	World No Tobacco Day - Warnings with images most effective –WHO World No Tobacco Day – part of the WHO’s Tobacco Free Initiative – will be marked on 31 May this year with the theme “Tobacco Health Warnings” to highlight the effect that health warnings – especially those with images – have on motivating users to quit and reducing the appeal of tobacco for those who are not yet addicted.

	Mixed reaction to government allowing doctors to carry guns There has been a mixed reaction in Iraq to a government decision to allow doctors to carry guns for their own protection, reports IRIN news.

	Calling all Iraqi doctors The Iraqi Health Ministry has set up a committee to contact medical doctors who have fled the country, and persuade them to return, a senior health official said on 3 August.