No Cheering Over Liberation At Baghdad Hospitals

by Nasreen Al-Rafiq

Not all the bombings brought so many wounded to the hospital at Al Kindi than the street fighting, doctors said. People heard the gunshots, and the hospitals provided bloody evidence of what the fighting was about.

On one side just by the front entrance lay a group of Iraqis under guard from men in plain clothes who were working already for the Americans. They were among a group of hundreds who charged a U.S. column in a suicide attack. At least 50 were said to have died in firing by the U.S. troops.

The Al-Kindi hospital bore testimony to the fact that while hundreds had come out to celebrate, very many more had tried to fight the U.S. troops. It was clear also at the hospitals that no one could expect much serious treatment at the hospital.

"We have reached breaking point, we need a lot of help and we need it now," Dr Osama Saleh told media representatives at the hospital. "We do not have the medicines; we do not have the staff to cope with all the patients coming in."

Doctors have been performing operations without giving patients full anaesthesia. For much of Thursday, it seemed that apart from dealing with crisis situations and taking care of those in serious condition, doctors had simply no time to attend to patients.

Much of the care is coming not just from nurses and other hospital staff but from volunteers. "I am not even a medical student, and I am having to do the job of doctors," said Abbas, as he tried to calm an elderly man screaming in pain on the hospital floor.

And as more wounded came in, there was fewer staff, Abbas said. "People have been just too afraid to move out," he said. Staff needed for essential functions like providing intravenous medication was simply not there.

It seemed that on a day when everyone thought Baghdad was out on the streets, most people had really stayed back in fear of crowds who knew no law or restraint.

After the bombs and the firing on the streets, the next killer will be infections. Every room in the hospital was filthy, and there were flies swarming about everywhere. Abbas was helping a nurse give water intravenously to a child. The needle was not sterilized, and had most likely been used before.

On the floor to a side a dozen men lay huddled together. One looked severely burned. He lay clutching a blanket and shivering. Patients with burns are particularly prone to infections given even the best of care. He had hardly a chance.

And yet no one seemed to complain about the doctors, or about the obvious lack of care. "There are just too many of us," said one man to a nurse who spoke a little English. "It is not their fault," he said, pointing at the nurse. "It is the Americans."

Other patients complained about Americans, so did the staff. The view on Americans inside the hospital seemed very different from the welcoming moves made by the crowds outside.

It was dark in these rooms, even in daylight. The electricity at the hospital had been off for the previous two days.

Generators are at hand for the surgery. But at night it seems the patients suffer without even a few volunteers like Abbas around.

At least one doctor told volunteers before he left that if a patient really needed him, they could bring them to the house of a relative. "The doctors are worried for themselves," said Abbas. "But they are worried also about their families and no one wants to leave women and children alone at home these days."

Most of the hospital doctors happen to be Sunni Muslims, says an elderly clerk close to the reception desk. "People fear now that the Shias are out to get them," he said. "So people do not want to stay."

Some patients too want to go away. But no one is coming to take them home, and they do not know how to leave on their own. There are no ambulances running, because the ambulance drivers too have fled, apparently in fear of the Shias.

Al-Kindi is a hospital these days with few medicines, few doctors and far too many patients.