wfn.org | Relief agency provides water to Baghdad slum

["NewsDesk" <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

Feb. 10, 2004	News media contact: Linda Bloom7(646) 369-37597New
York7E-mail:  newsdesk@umcom.org ALL-I-RM-YE {049}

NOTE: A map, Web-only photos and two related stories, UMNS #048 and #050, are
available with this report at umns.umc.org.

By Chris Herlinger*

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.

 
 

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United Methodist News Service
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