In downtown Baghdad, the misery engulfing today’s Iraq and erasing the splendor of its past is on full display. There, both history and humans are forsaken. Cracks course through the Abbasid-era minaret of al-Khulafa’ Mosque. Groundwater damages the foundations and the minaret gradually tilts eastward – on the verge of collapse. On the opposite side of al-Jumhuriyah street, moisture dominates the walls inside Saint Joseph Cathedral. Two historic landmarks shut to visitors.
Piles of garbage sit at the foot of ancient mosques, churches and the traditional Shanasheel houses in crumbling alleyways where childhood is stripped off early from minor porters. Maps of despair invade faces of traumatized female and child beggars, and the elderly who pass the remaining of their lifetime sipping sizzling tea at the many teahouses of al-Rashid Street – aghast at the draconian deformation their city has endured.
As Tawfiq, his brother and Turki meandered the souqs of Baghdad pulling handcarts in flip-flops, post-invasion politicians and their entourage gnawed at state coffers like termites. The ‘agents’, as labelled by ordinary citizens, nurtured their obese bank accounts instead of investing in the ever deteriorating infrastructure. The country’s ailing health sector is just one example.
Misery in Iraq’s hospitals
One state-employed doctor who recently served at a COVID-19 designated hospital in Baghdad privately describes the situation in Iraq’s hospitals as “quite miserable”.
Iraq’s health ministry has so far announced over 177,000 COVID-19 cases, while the disease snuffed out the lives of around 6,000 infected patients. But health workers privately say that they estimate higher numbers than those detected.
“I am not saying official stats are lying, but they don’t reflect reality,” he says, asking to remain anonymous.
In hospitals stuck in an enduring typhoon of conflicts and corruption, the number of infected people is “immense”, hospitals are crammed, testing capacity is insufficient and RCU beds for patients in critical phase are so limited that “patients are being placed on waiting lists” to be treated when other patients die, he says.
His assertion is not surprising. While the lockdown imposed by authorities in response to the initial emergence of infections proved decisive in stifling a surge of COVID-19 cases for a few months-considering Iraq’s neighbor Iran is a Middle East epicenter- it was neither adequately implemented nor fully respected.
Men sip sizzling-hot Iraqi tea, at an old cafe in the al-Maydan area of central Baghdad, Iraq on 22 June 2020 | Picture by Nabil Salih. All rights reserved
Busy markets and small shops in popular neighborhoods remained open, as opposed to those on main streets and in up-scale areas. As restaurants were ordered to close when authorities partially lifted the curfew, many of those in the major al-Shorja marketplace, or on and astride al-Rashid and al-Saadoun streets- two main thoroughfares in central Baghdad- remained open.
“In my opinion, there are at least 10,000 new cases every day,” the doctor says. Another doctor, also asking to be anonymized, says he estimates the actual number of COVID-19 patients to be at least a double of what is detected every day.
There are around 4,000 daily COVID-19 infections announced by the ministry of health.
“Into the Abyss”
Doctors in Baghdad criticize the government’s handling of the outbreak, how most of Baghdad’s main hospitals switched attention to treating and quarantining COVID-19 patients, while some received only certain non COVID-19 related emergencies.
By doing so, people suffering other ailments had less chances to be treated at state hospitals, and did not know where their loved ones would receive the needed care, the doctor says.
According to the World Bank, there only 1.4 hospital beds for each 1000 people in Iraq.
Patients arrive to a certain hospital thinking the emergency room receives all cases, instead they are directed elsewhere to a specialized hospital and that- considering Baghdad’s notorious traffic jams-“adds to their burden”, he explains. Under pressure from relatives of patients in critical condition, “sometimes you are compelled to receive COVID-19 patients at an emergency room where non COVID-19 patients reside,” he says. Thus, already vulnerable patients were sometimes put at risk of contracting the virus.
“There could have been another plan, (for example) designating specific buildings to quarantining patients (of COVID-19) to keep public hospitals functioning normally,” he says.
On 4 August, the country’s health minister announced that Baghdad’s public hospitals will resume regular operations as four COVID-19 designated hospitals will handle infected people. A decision lauded by doctors. Yet the government took another step back by lifting a three day round-the-clock curfew usually starting Thursday and ending on Saturday.
But there have always been “hurdles” facing patients at public hospitals, which usually do not offer comprehensive medical services, the doctor explains.
“People say the health system has collapsed, but there wasn’t one in the first place (…) we have been standing at edge for a long time, COVID-19 gave us a push and now we’re falling into the abyss,” he says.
The young doctor is currently curing himself at home from COVID-19’s assault on his body.
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Featured image: Portrait of Ali Tawfiq, a 19-year-old porter who ferries merchandise in old marketplaces in Baghdad, Iraq on 14 July 2020 |Picture by Nabil Salih. All rights reserved