Iraqi children pay for war
CHICAGO — An estimated 46,900 Iraqi children under the age of five died in the eight months following the beginning of the Persian Gulf War from causes directly related to the war according to an article in the September edition of New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).
Written by eight international public health officials, the article demonstrates that the burden of death in the Persian Gulf war was unfairly borne by a helpless segment of the Iraqi civilian population.
During the Gulf war, Pentagon representatives asserted that high- precision weapons with strategic targets produced only limited damage to civilians. The findings of the NEJM study "contradict this claim and confirm that the causalities of war extend far beyond those caused directly by warfare". A partial embargo by allied nations who attacked Iraq in the war continues until the present.
"Results show that there is a three fold increase in deaths of children between the ages of one year and five years during eight months after the war began", says Wallace Shellenberger, MD and former international medical worker.
"There was a 4 fold increase in deaths due to injuries and a 5.6 fold increase in deaths due to diarrhoea. The deaths of these children is directly related to the loss of electricity which led to a deterioration in the quality of water and the loss of capability to manage sewage".
Although the article in NEJM, covers the war and the following six months, effects of bad sewage, poor diet and lack of medical supplies, all related to the embargo, demonstrate that war related casualties among children still continue.
[From Pegasus]