BAGHDAD, 9 June 2003 — Iraqi children are suffering alarmingly high rates of diarrhea and related diseases, a spokesman for the UN children’s agency UNICEF said yesterday.
Geoffrey Keele told a news briefing that the incidence of such diseases, which include cholera, dysentery and typhoid, was two and a half times higher than at the same time in 2002.
“It’s extremely worrying,” Keele said, adding that a limited survey had indicated that more than 70 percent of Iraqi children had suffered at least one bout of diarrhea this year.
He said 66 cases of cholera, including three deaths, had been confirmed in the southern city of Basra. Four-fifths of the victims were children under the age of five.
In Baghdad, hospitals were reporting cases of dysentery and typhoid, but the previously rigorous government surveillance system had collapsed since the US-led war on Iraq, making it impossible to gain an accurate overall picture.
“We know for instance that last year there was a total of 2,000 cases (of typhoid),” Keele said. “This year we simply do not know because the health system has ceased to function.”
