Violence Invades Baghdad's Emergency Rooms

[Veronica.Franco]

Seeking Priority Care for Their Wounded, Iraqi Soldiers, Police Attack Physicians

By Saad al-Izzi
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, May 21, 2006; Page A21

BAGHDAD, May 16 -- On a bad day in Baghdad's busiest Iraqi ER -- and they're all bad -- the men wielding AK-47 assault rifles and pistols can outnumber the men and women with scalpels and stretchers 2 to 1.

"Help us out here!" called a blood-soaked man who had hauled his third pickup-truck load of dead and wounded men and women from a recent market bombing to the emergency room at Yarmouk Hospital.

snip ...


"I remember that day not because of the numbers, because sometimes we receive even more, but because they were all children," Ibrahim said. Yarmouk's ER was filled with some of the 35 children who were killed and 60 who were wounded.

For many medical workers, it's too much to take. Hundreds of physicians have left Iraq, fleeing not just the general violence but also those who attack them in an apparent attempt to destabilize the country by driving out its professionals. Physicians who stay face abuse by Iraq's security forces, who often demand priority -- and miracles -- for wounded troops and police.

"They think that everyone wearing a white coat can bring people back to life, even if they are shot in the head and their brains are out," Ibrahim said.

Employees at Yarmouk staged a two-day strike in March to protest the abuse. They described beatings, manhandling and insults by overwrought police officers and soldiers.

"Sometimes we overlook some of the violations, but other times they cross the line by starting to beat the doctors, and even start shooting inside the ward," Hussein said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/20/AR2006052001044.html

So remorseless a havoc ...

[elehhhhna]

1. Maybe the occupying army could patrol & secure the GD hospitals.

just saying.

[Kagemusha]

2. Then insurgents would actively attack the hospital guards.

There's no magic bullet.