An
Iraqi girl in the Hai Tarek section of Baghdad carries water home.
Water is delivered daily to this section of the city by All Our
Children.
An
Iraqi girl in the Hai Tarek section of Baghdad carries water home.
Water is delivered daily to this section of the city by All Our
Children. UMNS photo courtesy of Church World Service, Photo number
W04028, Accompanies UMNS #049, 2/10/04
BAGHDAD,
Iraq (UMNS) - The Baghdad suburb of Hai Tarek is an unusually harsh
place, and conditions here - muddy roads covered with garbage, no sewage
system, the effects of sickness and trauma - underline the continued
importance of humanitarian assistance.
"Humanitarian work is still needed here," said Mazen Mohsen, an Iraqi physician.
It's
also welcome, if the boisterous - and largely young - crowds that
greeted the daily delivery of water in this predominantly Shi'ite area
were any indication.
The
delivery was made possible by the support of U.S. churches working
together on the "All Our Children" campaign, an inter-agency effort to
meet the critical medical and health needs of Iraqi children and their
families. The campaign, led by Church World Service, is supported by
other U.S. church agencies, including the United Methodist Committee on
Relief.
The
campaign had raised $841,748 by early 2004, with $410,000 of that
amount provided through Church World Service, the relief arm of the U.S.
National Council of Churches. The campaign has supported a total of 14
projects.
The
campaign-funded water project in Hai Tarek - including daily delivery
of water and distribution of jerry cans to some 55,000 people (about
5,000 families) - is improving lives in one of Baghdad's poorest areas,
an area where most residents don't have jobs and where eight out of 10
residents are children.
Another
project is also improving conditions in the impoverished area: $60,000
is being used to support Hai Tarek's sole health clinic, a facility that
sees up to 250 patients a day.
Dozens
of Hai Tarek residents - many of them women in their black chadors
accompanied by small children - line up daily outside the clinic to see a
doctor or receive medicine.
Both projects are administered by Architects for People in Need, a German-based non-governmental organization.
In
coming weeks, Hai Tarek's residents will benefit from another All Our
Children-supported effort: five medicine boxes that will provide a
three-month supply of basic medicines for 5,000 people. And later this
year, children at a Hai Tarek school down the street from the clinic
will receive some of the 13,160 "Gift of the Heart" school kits that are
being shipped to Iraq. In addition, 16,450 "Gift of the Heart" health
kits are being sent to Iraq.
These
efforts must continue, given the ongoing medical problems in Iraq that
stem from long-term neglect and the past imposition of international
sanctions, Mohsen said. He called overall medical conditions in Iraq
"poor."
Post-war
confusion has contributed to the problems, resulting in a lack of safe
and usable medicines in Iraq. "That is the most serious problem we face
now," the physician said. If not corrected shortly, he warned, Iraq
would face a grave health crisis in the near future.
International
efforts are easing the problem. Jean Renouf, a program coordinator for
Premiere Urgence, a French agency that has received funding from the
campaign, thanked its U.S. church supporters for their assistance. Those
funds, he said, will be used to rehabilitate a wing, help build a
needed X-ray facility and buy a sonogram for a pediatric hospital in
Kerbala.
*Herlinger, a journalist and staff member of Church World Service, visited Iraq in January.