Word: shuwetij
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...Shuwetij cannot remember the last night no patients arrived in the emergency room of his small hospital in eastern Baghdad. Just two years ago, when the things were more normal, Shuwetij or other doctors working night shifts would pass many evenings snoozing or watching television as nothing happened. Not any more. Now Shuwetij, the senior doctor on staff at the al-Kindy Teaching Hospital, works the overnight shift most every night. Usually about five or six patients arrive in Shuwetij's emergency room every evening. Most have gunshot wounds. Others have burns and lacerations from explosions. Shuwetij rarely asks what...
...Shuwetij is one of a shrinking number of doctors who remain in Iraq. Thousands of physicians have fled the unrelenting violence in Iraq, where militants have murdered hundreds of doctors in recent years. The World Health Organization estimates that Iraq has less than seven doctors per 10,000 people. In neighboring Jordan, where many Iraqis have resettled, the number of physicians per person is more than double that, with at least two doctors per 1,000 people. Iraq's health care infrastructure is crumbling, too. Iraq's health ministry has estimated that nearly 90% of the country's medical facilities...
...agencies have spent on health care reconstruction projects in Iraq nonetheless. Child immunization campaigns have made impressive gains, with more than 80% of one-year-olds vaccinated against polio and other easily preventable diseases. But on the whole, the health care picture in Iraq remains bleak. Hospitals like Shuwetij's face chronic shortages as medicine and supplies. And of course the doctors keep leaving. Shuwetij says 10 of the doctors on his staff have fled Iraq in recent years after getting threats. The remaining doctors at the hospital, which has about 200 beds, often will not work overnight shifts because...
...home and all the other doctors go home, who will be there for the patients?" says Shuwetij, who did his residency at the hospital shortly after earning his medical degree. "The whole reason my colleagues and I keep working as we do these days is for the patients. We don't do it for the money, and we don't expect protection. We do just do what we were trained...
...even Shuwetij has moments when his sense of dedication falters. At times he too considers abandoning his hospital and leaving Iraq. On the rare days when Shuwetij and his wife get together with other friends who are doctors, almost all the talk is of who is leaving, when and how. Shuwetij is still unsure whether he could make such a decision himself. "Maybe," Shuwetij says when asked if he will one day go as well. For now, though, he stays. "We keep working the best...
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