The Common Ills: Nouri's failure with regards to Iraq's medical needs

Thursday, November 22, 2012

Nouri's failure with regards to Iraq's medical needs

Iraq is bringing in medical professionals -- nurses, doctors and techs -- from India and elsewhere. At a time of rapid unemployment within Iraq. Because Nouri al-Maliki is apparently too stupid, in his six years as prime minister, to fast track medical careers. It isn't that difficult to fast track in Iraq.

You have many bright students just graduating. You have many people who graduated some time ago looking for jobs. You have billions to play with if you'll stop stealing them from the Iraqi people.

Priro to the start of the illegal war in 2003, Iraq's problem was not a lack of medical professionals, it was a lack of up-to-date equipment. The war resulted in thugs being put in charge by the US government and what was a progressive Middle Eastern society became a dangerous and repressive one creating what the press dubbed "the brain drain." That's when a large number of professionals left the country for good. This pre-dates the ethnic cleansing of 2006 and 2007. The ethnic cleansing forced even more out. Doctors are targeted in Iraq. That forces more out.

Not only does Iraq need a program that gets people into medical training and does so quickly, it needs for what passes for leadership to start showing some respect for science. That would go a long way towards changing the climate in Iraq where doctors in various provinces repeatedly appeal to their provincial councils for protection. (Nouri's Baghdad-based government supplies each Member of Parliament with 30 bodyguards -- thirty! -- but doctors and nurses have no protection.)

Alsumaria reports a doctor in Baghdad was killed in a clinic which was then set on fire. In addition, All Iraq News adds that a husband and wife were discovered in Mosul shot to death with their bodies dumped in the street.

On the medical issues, they could have trained LVNs in less than two years. There are many intelligent Iraqis who are graduating school and who are already out of school that would jump at the chance for real training that would guarantee a job - and one with real security. The government should have instituted fast track programs to address the need. Instead, they're bringing in foreigners -- when Iraq's official unemployment rate -- according to the CIA -- stands at 15%.

Maybe certain American nit-wits hectoring repeatedly over the years about how government jobs aren't real jobs has had the impact the idiots desired?

I have no idea.

But when the UN finds Iraq's young adults have an unemployment rate of over 20%, you don't bring people in to fill high paying jobs. You're creating animosity which breeds violence. Contract workers have been targeted throughout the war (I'm not referring to military/security contractors -- I'm speaking of, for example, hotel workers brought in from the Philippines) and they're not filling high pay positions.

When Nouri was first installed by the US government in 2006, "the brain drain" was already a widely used term and widely covered in the press. Nouri has had six years to get on this issue but his way to 'solve' it is not to provide training for Iraqis but to offer employment to people living in foreign countries.

(Equally true, nurses are in short supply throughout the world. In 2010, Jennifer Walker wrote about "The Global Nursing Shortage" for Johns Hopkins Nursing. The issue either gets addressed within a country or it will get much, much worse because at some point, there really aren't enough nurses to raid from other countries.)

The following community sites -- plus Jane Fonda, Adam Kokesh, World Can't Wait, On the Wilder Side, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Jody Watley, the ACLU, Antiwar.com, Chocolate City, NPR and The NewsHour -- updated last night and today: