Baghdad hospitals start stockpiling for war

6.00pm - By KIM SENGUPTA in Baghdad

While treating dozens of children with cancer and struggling to cope with the limitations on medicine and equipment caused by the United Nations sanctions, Baghdad's Al-Mansour Hospital is now preparing for war.

What supplies can be spared are being stockpiled. Secure emergency shelters are being prepared for the patients and contingency rotas drawn up for the medical staff, who have been told to be ready to leave Baghdad for outlying areas at short notice.

"It is in keeping with what everyone else is doing," said the hospital's director, Dr Luay Quasha. "People everywhere are saving water, food, petrol, candles ... we are doing all that, but also reserving all the basic medical apparatus one needs for casualties in conflict – blood supplies, fluids, operating theatres, antibiotics and anaesthetics.

"The staff will be working in 24-hour shifts, we shall have rest stations and we shall have transport ready to evacuate the patients when necessary. These are normal war-time practices."

Did he approve of Iraq's offer to allow back the UN inspectors? Did he not think war could be avoided?

"Do you like war? Do you like death?" asks Dr Quasha, 48, who trained at the London Hospital in Whitechapel, in response. "I don't, so of course I welcome the inspectors coming back. The American people understand the suffering of the Iraqi people, but the American government, they are the problem."

The hospital is, in many ways, a microcosm of Iraqi society. Despite years of tussling between the UN sanctions committee and Saddam Hussein's regime – in which medicine became a political football – there have been some improvements in recent years.

Nowhere near enough equipment and drugs are still being allowed, say the medical staff. The salary of a junior doctor, NZ$847 a month before the Gulf War, is now $42. But things are better than a few years ago, and the prolonged privation has resulted in finely honed methods of improvisation. Now all that may be jeopardised.

The hospitals have become part of the horror tour laid on for the media, anti-war activists and dignitaries who come to Baghdad.

Al-Mansour has the familiar sights of misery and hopelessness. The children's wards are filled with young patients suffering from cancer – the result, say the Iraqis and some independent Western medical experts, of depleted uranium used by the United States and Britain in the Gulf War. This is denied by Washington and London. Dr Quasha says he and his colleagues have seen the rate rise from 56 per 1,000 between 1985-89, to 131 per 1,000 between 1995-99.

There is also a large increase in premature births, partly brought about by the psychological traumas caused to mothers who live for year after year expecting a conflict. Sahar Jaafar, nine days old, weighs just 690 grams (1lb 8oz). She is the size of my A4 notepad. Abdel Razaak, five days old, is 1.25kg (2lb 12oz). Neither is likely to survive.

The traders in the main market say people have been stocking up for a while, and there has been no change in this since Naji Sabri, the Iraqi Foreign Minister, wrote to Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, on Tuesday with the offer to readmit the weapons inspectors unconditionally.

Mohammed Tayyab Hussein, a trader, said: "Business is good at the moment, but I don't know how long it will last. If the Americans invade, there will be complete breakdown of law and a lot of killings. Everyone has guns here and a lot of scores to settle."

At preliminary talks with Hans Blix, the chief UN arms inspector, on resuming the inspections, Iraqi officials agreed to provide biannual reports on weapons for the four years since monitoring was suspended.

Government sources in Baghdad insisted Iraq was genuine about offering the monitors unfettered access. One senior civil servant asked: "Why should we put our head back in the noose? We know the Americans want the slightest pretext to attack us.

"We want to co-operate, as long as the demands are not preposterous. We are making all the moves asked of us by our Arab friends, the Russians, the Chinese. But all we see in return is America and Britain preparing for war."

- INDEPENDENT

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