[Shadow_Group] Iraq: Child Malnutrition Doubles

[shadowgroup-l at lists.resist.ca]

  Children Pay Cost of Iraq's Chaos
  Malnutrition Nearly Double What It Was Before Invasion

  By Karl Vick
  Washington Post Foreign Service
  Sunday, November 21, 2004; Page A01

  BAGHDAD -- Acute malnutrition among young children in Iraq has nearly
  doubled since the United States led an invasion of the country 20 months
  ago, according to surveys by the United Nations, aid agencies and the
  interim Iraqi government.

  After the rate of acute malnutrition among children younger than 5
  steadily declined to 4 percent two years ago, it shot up to 7.7 percent
  this year, according to a study conducted by Iraq's Health Ministry in
  cooperation with Norway's Institute for Applied International Studies
  and the U.N. Development Program. The new figure translates to roughly
  400,000 Iraqi children suffering from "wasting," a condition
  characterized by chronic diarrhea and dangerous deficiencies of protein.

  Suad Ahmed's 4-month-old granddaughter, Hiba, has chronic diarrhea, a
  common ailment among Iraqi children under 5. (Karl Vick -- The
  Washington Post)

  "These figures clearly indicate the downward trend," said Alexander
  Malyavin, a child health specialist with the UNICEF mission to Iraq.

  The surveys suggest the silent human cost being paid across a country
  convulsed by instability and mismanagement. While attacks by insurgents
  have grown more violent and more frequent, deteriorating basic services
  take lives that many Iraqis said they had expected to improve under
  American stewardship.

  Iraq's child malnutrition rate now roughly equals that of Burundi, a
  central African nation torn by more than a decade of war. It is far
  higher than rates in Uganda and Haiti.

  full: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A809-2004Nov20.html

  -- 
  Marxism list: www.marxmail.org
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