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Although plans have yet to be firmed up, Garfield said
he soon may go to Kuwait to discuss protective health
measures with U.S. military personnel massed there for
an invasion of Iraq. "The big-ticket item is the
unknown, which the military is spending a good deal
of attention preparing for," Garfield said. "The
concern for the military is biological, chemical or
nuclear exposure. However, it is minor compared to the
concerns for those matters among civilian populations
in the area, particularly among displaced people."
Garfield said he doesn't anticipate as many refugees
as in the 1991 Gulf War, but as long as there is fear-or
even rumor-of chemical or biological weapons in play,
humanitarian aid agencies can't commit relief personnel.
"There will be thousands of people who don't get
basic support. Those are the people who are really at
risk. They don't have protective mechanisms and they
don't have food or medicine of a basic nature,"
he said.
Gerri Haynes, RN, is a palliative care consultant from
Seattle. At 60, she is a former critical care nurse,
nursing administrator, and for 8½ years, a palliative
care consultant at Seattle's Children Hospital. She
completed the history and ethics course work for a master's
degree, but put off a thesis because she was in the
process of establishing a hospice, she said.
Haynes is the first to admit that when it comes to
Iraq and military action, "I don't know what's
going to happen." But she has witnessed in four
trips to Iraq what has happened under U.N. economic
sanctions imposed after the last war to undermine Saddam.
It is "a public health disaster of major proportions,"
in a country that until 1990 was widely regarded as
the finest medical community in the Middle East outside
of Israel, Haynes said. "By 1998, the medical community
had suffered so extensively, and the public health had
suffered so deeply, that my impression was of a country
that had suffered a man-made disaster to their public
health and to their society that was unconscionable."
Three times, Haynes has led fact-finding delegations
to Iraq under the auspices of Washington Physicians
for Social Responsibility. She was president of the
organization last year.
She also has taught grief, bereavement and sustaining
culture through a time of intense loss at the University
of Baghdad School of Medicine.
"All of the medical education in Iraq is done
in English. Their textbooks are in English; they chart
in English," Haynes said. "And now they have
this impoverishment of extended education because much
of their secondary education for medicine happened outside
the country and then people went back in. But that's
no longer possible because of the sanctions."
Although Iraq is a secular nation, "There is a
rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism," Haynes
said. "But that happens in any country under siege.
The sanctions have hurt the Iraqi people."
According to the United Nations, she said, the sanctions
are independently responsible for the deaths of more
than 500,000 children aged 5 and younger. "Those
are excess deaths, more than would have been predicted
under the Iraqi system of medical care."
Iraqi scientists attribute a sevenfold increase in
the rate of childhood leukemia since 1990 to exposure
to low-grade uranium 238 from weapons used in the first
Gulf war, Haynes said. "That's something that needs
a lot more study across the world because this substance,
uranium 238, has been used in the Balkans and Afghanistan
and perhaps in other places as well."
Haynes said she believes a new war-and she prefers
the term "attack"-is "an economically
driven enterprise."
"What I think would be better than an attack on
the civilian population of Iraq would be some form of
the Marshall Plan, and some economic development plan
that would help the Iraqi people regain their economic
stability. I also think direct diplomacy would have
a much more profound effect on saving both civilian
lives in Iraq and our military lives than the plan that
seems to be in place."
Contact Phil McPeck at getpjm@aol.com
Discuss this and other topics with your colleagues
at www.nurseweek.com/rnvillage
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