20,000 amputees in Iraq & 45,000 Iraqi security force members have been injured

[partylessinOhio]

More reasons that the war needs to end, the Iragis are sustaining serious injuries and deaths too.

===============================================

ABC's Iraqi Journalists Covered Health Care Before Baghdad Ambush
One of Their Last Reports Explores Disparity Between Care for U.S. Soldiers and Iraqis in the War Zone

May 18, 2007

ABC News' Iraqi broadcast journalists, cameraman Alaa Uldeen Aziz, 33, and soundman Saif Laith Yousuf, 26, were returning home from work at the ABC News Baghdad bureau Thursday afternoon when their car was reportedly ambushed and they were killed by unknown assailants.

One of the last stories they covered was a piece with correspondent Terry McCarthy to detail the disparity in medical treatment between wounded Americans in the war zone and wounded Iraqis. The following is what they reported on "World News."

Saif Talib was shot in both legs while on a joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol last June in Baghdad. After he was injured, a helicopter took him to a U.S. military hospital where they had to amputate both of his legs.


"I am so happy," said Talib, "because without the Americans, I would have been taken to an Iraqi hospital and I would be dead by now."


The Americans saved his life that night, but to get artificial limbs from the Iraqi medical service took months. There are 20,000 amputees in Iraq and the main prosthetic clinic in Baghdad can only make six new limbs a week, as there are not enough funds, according to Col. Bassim al Kwanchi, who is in charge of the Iraqi military prosthetics program.

...
Roughly 45,000 Iraqi security force members have been injured since the war began in 2003, and unless they are with U.S. troops, they have to be treated locally. Iraqi hospitals were once some of the best in the Middle East — now they are terribly short of skilled doctors and modern equipment. Baghdad's neurosurgery hospital gets about 120 traumatic brain injuries a month and struggles to treat them. ...

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/story?id=3190657&page=1f

[malaise]

1. What's more as bad as treatment for the US military is

it's a thousand times better than what is available to the Iraqis.

I'm sick of this slaughter. It's Time for the occupation to end.

[kirby]

2. How do they stand up/we stand down, if they have no legs?

Joking aside, how sad.

[Robbien]

3. A McClatchy Iraqi blogger has a diary about not finding any dentists in Iraq

That they all have left Iraq for safety reasons.

It is hardly imaginable to think one cannot take care of a sore tooth. It would be downright scary to think what one has to go through to get serious medical help in Iraq.