Medical situation in Iraq

[tequila]

Deadly cholera outbreak in northern Iraq - LATIMES, 1 Sep.

A cholera outbreak in northern Iraq, where thousands of people have sought refuge from sectarian violence, is overwhelming hospitals and has killed as many as 10 people, health officials said Friday.

The outbreak in Sulaymaniya and Kirkuk is seen as the latest example of the displacement and deterioration of living conditions caused by the Iraqi conflict.

The water-borne disease has struck more than 80 people in the two cities, which are about 100 miles apart, said Claire Hajaj of the U.N. Children's Fund, or Unicef. She said cholera had been confirmed as the cause of five deaths and was suspected in five others.

Local officials said more than 2,000 people had been affected.

Aid agencies had warned of the possibility of a cholera outbreak as blazing summer heat settled in Iraq, where the infrastructure is shattered by war and neglect. The disease tends to appear in the summer because, as the temperature rises, Iraq's chronic electricity shortages make it difficult to operate pumps at sewage and drinking-water treatment plants, which leaves many people without clean water ...

[Rob Thornton]

Its important to consider that "security" extends beyond the physical sense, and how that translates to how a populace perceives itself. I'd also suggest that we don't always consider the relationship between critical infrastructure and the people required to provide critical services - those professionals who make the medical, legal, political, and economic systems respond to the needs of the populace.

The AIF I think has understood it from the beginning. The reasons we might not have understood as well could be:

-where we perceived our focus to be
-where we preferred our focus to be
-the fact that our critical infrastructure was on the FOBs

I think during the last year or two we have made some great gains in understanding how the infrastructure problems bear on security and instability, but we still have a problem securing the means and ways to fix (and to help the Iraqis fix) these problems given the scope of the problems and the many other related problems brought on by instability.