55 year-old Zoman, detained from his home in Kirkuk in a raid by US soldiers that produced no weapons, was taken to a police office in Kirkuk, to the Kirkuk Airport Detention Center, the Tikrit Airport Detention Center and finally to the 28th Combat Support Hospital, where he was treated by Dr. Michael Hodges, a Lt. Col.

Lt. Col. Hodges’ medical report listed Zoman’s primary condition as hypoxic brain injury (brain damage caused by lack of oxygen) “with persistent vegetative state,” myocardial infarction (heart attack), and heat stroke.”

After one month in custody, Zoman was dropped off in a coma at the General Hospital in Tikrit by US soldiers. Zoman’s last name was listed as his first name on the report, despite the fact that all of his identification papers were taken during the raid on his home. Because of this, it took his desperate family weeks to locate him in the hospital.

Hodges’s medical report did not mention the fact that the back of Zomans’ head was bashed in, nor that he had electrical burn marks on the bottoms of his feet and genitals, or why he had lash marks across his back and chest.

Today he lies in bed still in a coma, and there has been no compensation provided to his now impoverished family for what was done to Sadiq Zoman.

Another aspect I shall discuss is the catastrophic situation of the health system in Iraq. I’ve recently released a report on the condition of Iraq’s hospitals under occupation.

Although the Iraq Ministry of Health has supposedly gained its sovereignty and received promises of over $1 Billion of US funding, hospitals in Iraq continue to face ongoing medicine, equipment, and staffing shortages under the US-led occupation.

During the 1990’s, medical supplies and equipment were constantly in short supply because of the sanctions against Iraq. The war and occupation brought promises of relief from effects of the sanctions, yet hospitals have had little chance to recover and re-supply: instead, the occupation has closely resembled a low-grade war since its inception. In addition, allocation of resources by occupation authorities has been dismal. Thus, throughout Baghdad there are ongoing shortages of functional equipment and medicines of even the most basic items such as analgesics, antibiotics, anesthetics and insulin. Surgical items and even basic supplies like rubber gloves, gauze and medical tape are running out.

In April 2004, an ICRC report stated that hospitals in Iraq are overwhelmed with new patients, short of medicine and supplies and lack both adequate electricity and water, with ongoing bloodshed stretching the hospitals’ already meager resources to the limit.

Ample testimony from medical practitioners confirms this crisis. A general practitioner at the prosthetics workshop at Al-Kena Hospital in Baghdad, Dr. Thamiz Aziz Abul Rahman, said, “Eleven months ago we submitted an emergency order for prosthetic materials to the Ministry of Health, and still we have nothing.” After a pause he added, “This is worse than even during the sanctions.”

Dr. Qasim al-Nuwesri, the chief manager at Chuwader General Hospital, one of the two hospitals in the sprawling slum area of Sadr City, Baghdad and home to 3 million people, added that they, too, faced a shortage of most supplies and, most critically, of ambulances. But for his hospital, the lack of potable water was the major problem. “Of course we have typhoid, cholera, kidney stones…but we now even have the very rare Hepatitis Type-E…and it has become common in our area,” said al-Nuwesri, adding that they never faced these problems prior to the invasion of 2003.

Chuwader hospital needs at least 2000 liters of water per day to function with basic sterilization practices. According to Dr. al-Nuwesri, they received 15% of this amount. “The rest of the water is contaminated and causing problems, as are the electricity cuts,” added al-Nuwesri, “Without electricity our instruments in the operating room cannot work and we have no pumps to bring us water.”

At Fallujah General Hospital, Dr. Ahmed, who asked that only his first name be used because he feared US military reprisals said of the April 2004 siege that “the Americans shot out the lights in the front of our hospital. They prevented doctors from reaching the emergency unit at the hospital, and we quickly began to run out of supplies and much needed
medications.” He also said that Marines kept the physicians in the residence building several times, intentionally prohibiting them from entering the hospital in order to treat patients.

In November, shortly after leveling Nazzal Emergency Hospital, US forces entered Fallujah General Hospital, the city’s only healthcare facility for trauma victims, detaining employees and patients alike. According to medics on the scene, water and electricity were “cut off,” ambulances targeted or confiscated by the US military, and surgeons, without exception, kept out of the besieged city.

Hospital raids by US military and US-backed Iraqi forces now appear to be standard operating procedure. On the 18th of this month, doctors at the main hospital in Baquba went on strike, saying they are fed up with constant abuse at the hands of aggressive Iraqi police and soldiers.

Dr. Mohammed Hazim in Baquba, pleaded for his governor to protect he and his colleagues from “organized terrorism of the police and army.”

When wounded Iraqi security forces showed up demanding treatment, Dr. Hussein told one of them he would require an x-ray. The doctor was told to go to hell by the policeman he was treating and was then beaten. The same policeman then ordered another police officer to put a bag over the doctor’s head and take him away.

“Our security guards tried to stop them, telling them I was a doctor, but they didn't listen and beat the security guards too,” he said, “Then one of them put a gun to my head and threatened me.”

Similar behavior has been reported during the recent US-Iraqi military operations in Haditha and Al-Qa’im. Doctors also recently went on strike at the large Yarmouk Hospital in Baghdad in a very similar incident.

Many doctors in Iraq believe that the lack of assistance, if not outright hostility, by the US military, coupled with the lack of
rebuilding and reconstruction by foreign contractors has compounded the problems they are facing.

The former ambassador of Iraq Paul Bremer admitted that US led coalition spending on the Iraqi Health system was inadequate when he said, “It’s not nearly enough to cover the needs in the healthcare field.”