War’s result – Third of Iraqi children now malnourished four years after U.S. invasion, Catholic relief agencies state
VATICAN CITY (Catholic Online) – Caritas Internationalis and Caritas Iraq say that malnutrition rates have risen in Iraq from 19 percent before the US-led invasion to a national average of 28 percent four years later.
The Catholic aid agencies said, in a March 16 statement, that rising hunger has been caused by high levels of insecurity, collapsed healthcare and other infrastructure, increased polarization between different sects and tribes and rising poverty.
More than 11 percent of newborn babies are born underweight in Iraq today, compared with a figure of 4 percent in 2003. Before March 2003, Iraq already had significant infant mortality due to malnutrition because of the international sanctions regime.
Caritas Iraq has been running a series of Well Baby Clinics throughout the country. Currently, it provides supplementary food for about 8,000 children up to 8 years of age and new mothers.
Caritas Iraq is one of 162 Catholic relief, development and social-service organizations that form the Caritas Internationalis confederation present in more than 200 countries and territories throughout the world. Caritas Internationalis is based here in Vatican City.
Caritas Iraq clinics help the most vulnerable, and the health crisis they face is much worse than the national average.
“Sectarian and tribal conflict infects daily life in Iraq,” said Claudette Habesch, president of Caritas Middle East North Africa, which works closely with Caritas Iraq. “Primary and secondary schools, hospitals, police, government are all divided along these lines. You cannot even go to the supermarket without fear that you will not return.”
“Caritas Iraq is working against this difficult background providing vital food to the most vulnerable children and newborn mothers. Staff face great risks but still managing to provide medical care in a country where the national healthcare system has collapsed in some areas,” she said.
She noted that while “Iraq has the second largest oil supplies in the world,” its “levels of poverty, hunger and underdevelopment comparable to sub-Saharan Africa.”
“We have seen life get worse rather than better for the ordinary Iraqi” over the last four years and especially in 2006, Habesch said.
“People are voting with their feet,” she added, with 5,000 Iraqis leaving each day and an expected one in ten Iraqis to leave the war-torn nation in 2007.
“We are seeing minority groups such as Christians completely disappear from the country or leave their homes for safer areas,” she said. “I have hope for Iraq that things will improve but that is because things can surely get no worse.”
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