I have recently heard and read reports that children with cancer in Iraq do
not have access to many cancer medications and treatments and most
disturbing to me, pain medication. Is this true? I’ve also heard that this
is a direct result of sanctions.
True
cite?
Sanctions against which gov’t- the deposed Saddam Hussein gov’t or the new US-backed Iraqi gov’t? Who is imposing these sanctions? Was this post caught in a Internet time-warp since March 2003?
un sanctions against iraq. i don’t believe this is true.
i am looking for anyone that can show me that this is true.
http://www.embargos.de/irak/aktionen/soli_del2002/viel_krebs_woz_kl.htm
An article from 2002, in a swiss newspaper.
I doubt much has changed since then.
.
It boggles the mind.
There’s been a few changes made in Iraq since 2002. You might want to read a newspaper or something to catch up.
You seem to have missed this story:
A link to the text of the relevant UN Resolution.
Relief organizations are starting to bring medical supplies and treatment to Iraq. One example:
I think there’s a rule around here about not linking to non-English articles.
bobwass, it would help if you linked to a news report or some other page that details these allegations, such as if this is said to be happening right now, or if it was a problem several years ago.
If it was several years ago, the UN Oil For Food Program, which governed the sales of Iraq oil between the two wars, basically allowed unlimited amounts of food and medicine, but not cash, to pay for Iraqi oil sales. The Oil for Food Program was ended upon Saddam’s ouster. (Note that there have been more recent charges about kickbacks and waste in the program coming to light in recent weeks)
There were other problems with this program, however. While basic medicines could get into Iraq, deliveries of other important equipment – generators for hospitals and such – could be delayed or stopped because of the possibility that such equipment would be diverted to military uses. There was a United Nations committee that evaluated what could get through, and what couldn’t.
I do not recall any specific information that cancer medicines or pain medication were not allowed into Iraq under the Oil for Food Program. Frankly, I am very dubious of that charge. Also, I am unaware of any current restrictions whatsoever on medicine shipments in 2004.
Again, if you provide more information about the allegations, I bet I could dig up a factual answer for you in rather short order.
$25k from Pfizer? How generous, that’ll pay for…ooohh…two-thirds of a cancer patient :rolleyes:
To add a bit more fidelity, the American authorities in Iraq have established an English-Arabic website for the Iraqi Ministry of Health. As one would expect, there are no specific complaints about shortfalls in specific areas, but it does have some statistics that might be of interest to you.
For example, there have been 25,000 tons of pharmaceuticals and supplies delivered to Iraq; 30 million doses of childhood vaccines have been delivered; and Iraq’s health care budget has grown from $16 million in 2002 to $950 million in 2004.
http://www.mohiraq.org/overview.htm
Despite this good news, of course, it is obvious that Iraq is still a very unhealthy country, and that hospitals have a hell of a lot of work to do before they come close to meeting Western standards.
6000 TB patients, if you were really curious, and not just trying to score some snarky points against a corporation that donated only a tiny fraction of its annual revenue, but still 25K more than you did.
I’ll see if I can find it, but I remember an article a tour of a hospital where an administrator was able to free himself from the minders and tell a reporter that there were plenty of cancer drugs–but only for the elite’s children. The rest were sold on the black market.
The sanctions specifically exempted medicines, but the corruption was such in the country that it was hard for everyone to get them unless you were favored by the regime or could pay enough bribes to the doctors. Saddam withheld electricity to huge swaths of the country to punish them for being insurgents; he played the same games with medicines and UN-donated food.
With Iraq’s hospitals in disarray, the long-term sick are being passed over in a frantic effort to treat emergency cases. For the thousands of young leukaemia victims, the outlook is bleaker than ever.
Since the OP was about cancer, I thought the comparison with $33k for the relevant treatment makes sense.
Incidentally, $25k is 0.0002% of Pfizer’s annual income. The eqivalent proportion of my income is nine-tenths of one penny. If I go and put tuppence in an Iraq relief fund, will you retract your gripe?
No, I will not retract my gripe. You weren’t contributing anything to the OP, and you were slagging a company’s generosity for no good purpose.
But seeing as this is GQ and we’re supposed to be flinging knowledge about, a quick glance at Pfizer’s Annual Report for 2002 indicates that they’re spending $2,000,000 every working day on philanthropy, partly on low-cost pharmaceuticals to those who can’t afford health insurance, and partly on fighting fungal infections and trachoma (a cause of blindness) in Third World nations. Even though I’m sure it’s all tax deductible and dispensed with an eye to the good PR that it generates, it’s pretty hard to dismiss a company that spends $400,000,000/year on philanthropy as tight-fisted skinflints.