Blogroll Me!
World Health Organisation : Cholera Cases Continue To Increase In Iraq ...
Remember the extremely worrying reports we highlighted a while ago regarding the outbreak of cholera in Iraq?
Well, whether you do or you don't we want you to (carefully), peruse this particularly important piece recently provided by regular reader/commenter, Du.
===================================
This posting - http://gorillasguides.com/2007/10/31/cholera-sitrep_30/ says this:
In the light of Maryam's concerns that data about this outbreak is being manipulated for political reasons we have made a change to the table showing the Laboratory confirmed cholera Cases in Irak henceforth the table will show:
The Increase in Reported Deaths since the last situation report.
The Increase in laboratory- confirmed case of cholera since the last situation report.
Additionally notes to the table will show any increase in the numbers of districts within a governorate reporting cases of Cholera.We've been concerned for some time that the data is being presented to western reporters in particular but also to Arabic media in a political way.
That is why we concentrate on the World Health Organisation reports.
They don't come out as often or as well as we might like but they are the only source of reliable data - even if they are very conservative figures.
If any of you know people writing about this or you write about it yourselves please cite the [official] W.H.O. figures. There is way too much spinning going on - particularly as the governorate election campaign is now gearing up.
Our info from the governorates is that preparations are very piecemeal -- chaotic is a word that comes back to us all the time from team members and correspondents. Let us all hope this outbreak does not spread. November and December are the two dangerous months.
Also the ethnic cleansing campaign in Ninewa, and At Ta'mim is getting very intense. As we come up to Article 140 voting this will get worse.
Du*
Labels: Article 140, At Ta'mim, cholera, ethnic cleansing, Iraq war, media whores, Ninewa, World Health Organisation
posted by Richard at Saturday, November 03, 2007
4 Comments:
Du: Thanks for that info and figures. I just wish it wasn't such lousy news. However, you're right about "spin" my friend, it's the norm now in MSM, apart from VERY few exceptions.
Richard: I must have missed that first cholera post of yours. I'll have to stop slacking and pay more attention. I'm using that same old favourite excuse though - advancing years.
This is so scary, knowing how many Iraqis can't get enough clean water to drink. It's good that Du and his colleagues have been so aggressive about this, or it would already be apocalyptic.
Here's a BBC round up of some Iraqi bloggers giving their own takes on things in Iraq right now.
Well worth a look.
Richard thank you so much for this - we really are desperate to get the news on the Cholera situation out. At the risk of blogwhoring I think we're at least one of the best sources for the cholera outbreak in Irak on the net.
Apart from anything else keeping it in the public eye will - at present, keep the governorate authorities a little bit on their toes. There are the governorate elections coming up and they feel vulnerable to criticism. The current governorate set up is mostly a mix of Maliki's party and Hakim's party - pretty much everyone else boycotted the provincial elections. The elections for the governorates aren't being boycotted this time though. So they're running scared. The scale of corruption and incompetence is beyond belief and people are getting pissed off about it. When even WHO are making comments about water and sanitation departments just "sitting and watching" you know things are in a bad way and that's in Kirkuk which God help us all is one of the better run governorates.
Please file the rest of this comment under the heading of "scream of outrage".
The obscene thing is that because of the chlorine bombings the Americans prevented the single most necessary thing which would have prevented this from being done — Bringing in the chlorine for the water. It sounds reasonable but it isn't because horrible though those bombings were nobody actually died from the chlorine. They were made ill yes, and because of the war with Iran gas as a weapon has a big publicity impact in Irak. But it needs to be very concentrated for you to die from it. So it's not a very effective gas weapon - Which was why the various armies stopped using it in World War One and switched to the even more horrible Mustard Gas. What the poor people who died in the chlorine bombings died of was of the explosion itself, the shrapnel, and of course being burnt.
Between diarrheal disease and cholera, there have been more deaths caused by holding chlorine back from water purification plants than deaths caused by chlorine from the IEDs. And there have been many more hospital cases of cholera because of restricting chlorine than to treat chemical burns and eye and lung irritations caused by exposure to chlorine from the bombs. Cholera is endemic in Irak anyway. But even under sanctions a typical year would be 2-3 cases per year and Iraki doctors are very quick to diagnose and treat it, you don't have to die of it in this day and age. We're all hoping and praying that this outbreak doesn't spread because if it does then the central and southern governorates especially Diyala, especially the refugee camps which don't have access to clean water are going to be even more of hell on earth than they already are. Not that the water treatment plants which were systematically bombed by the Americans and have not been rebuilt despite lots and lots of lucrative no-bid contracts to the American government's buddies in Halliburton were in good shape to start off with.
I just go cold thinking about it.
I find this so horrific - it's "The Land Of The Two Rivers" for God's sake, it has some of the most fertile and productive land in the world. They don't call it the "Fertile Crescent" for nothing and they're dieing of malnutrition, of thirst, and of water-borne diseases. Back in May a guy called Mike Ferner wrote an article called Collateral Genocide and that's exactly what this whole evil stinking war is it's a genocidal monstrosity where the genocide is being committed as a by-product.
Post a Comment
<< Home