BAGHDAD, 8 May 2003 — Scores of Iraqi doctors took to the streets of Baghdad yesterday to protest against the deteriorating health system and the undersecretary appointed by US officials as the new head of the Health Ministry.
The US civil administration last week appointed Ali Shinan, undersecretary under the government of deposed President Saddam Hussein, as head of the ministry. “Ali Shinan ... is a hypocrite, he is not the right man for the post,” Ihab Sami, a resident doctor at Al-Shaheed Adnan Hospital, told Reuters.
“No one loves him, he was one of the worst people at the ministry,” said Sami, who said the protesters represented the majority of doctors in Iraq.
The Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) had planned a news conference on the Health Ministry appointments for today, but has postponed the conference for two days, without giving a reason.
Around 200 doctors from 25 hospitals in Baghdad and the provinces chanted: “No more corruption” and “We want a healthy health system” during the protest outside the Palestine Hotel in central Baghdad. Wearing white robes, the doctors carried banners reading “No to former administration,” and “We demand the swift installation of a freely elected Iraqi government.”
“We do not want the demonstration to look like a strike, so not all the doctors took part in it. It’s a peaceful rally to demand our rights,” Sami said.
Hospitals in Baghdad, hit by power cuts and shortages of medical supplies, were badly affected by lawlessness after Saddam’s fall on April 9. Delays in bringing in international aid have also hampered the work of doctors in a country already suffering under mismanagement and 13 years of trade sanctions.
“The new ministry is made up of the old corrupted figures who had an effective role in damaging the health system,” said Amadudin Al-Suaidi, another doctor. “It is unacceptable and unreasonable to deal with those figures again. It was not only Saddam Hussein who was responsible for corruption, but all the senior officials,” Suaidi said. The demonstrators demanded the dismissal of all the Health Ministry undersecretaries and directors and improvements in resident doctors’ living standards.
“Our salaries cannot cover the cost of transport,” said Suaidi. “It is a dream to buy a car or even marry in a separate house. If you want to eat in a restaurant you have to plan for it,” he said. Newly qualified doctors in Iraq earned 20,000 to 40,000 Iraqi dinars ($10-20) a month under the previous government.
Meanwhile, according to a diplomat in London, the United States will let the UN’s nuclear watchdog agency return to Iraq to verify Baghdad’s compliance with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. “There is no question that inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency will eventually go back to Iraq,” the diplomat, familiar with US thinking, told Reuters yesterday on condition of anonymity.
“They are the guardians of the NPT,” he said, adding that Iraq was a signatory of the global treaty aimed at stopping the spread of nuclear weapons. The diplomat did not say when the US would let the inspectors back, but said it was clear Washington saw the IAEA playing a “long-term role in Iraq”, monitoring its nuclear activities.
The diplomat did not mention the UN’s other inspection body, chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix’s UNMOVIC monitoring and verification agency, which hunted for Iraq’s alleged chemical, biological and ballistic arms.
IAEA chief Mohamed El-Baradei has been calling for a quick return of UN inspectors, who left Baghdad days before the US launched a war to disarm Saddam Hussein. The US has so far refused to allow the inspectors back into Iraq and has taken over the job of hunting for Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. The US and Britain alleged that Iraq was reviving its ambitious nuclear weapons program that IAEA inspectors had uncovered and destroyed before fleeing the country in December 1998.
