With Imports Restricted, Disease and Malnutrition Spread in Iraq

Typhoid fever and malnutrition are spreading in Iraq because of water-supply disruptions and shortages of food, especially baby formula, international relief organizations say.

U.N. sanctions imposed on Iraq last August are eroding health and nutrition by preventing the import of enough anti-typhoid drugs, chlorine for water purification and basic foodstuffs for its 18 million people, they say.

“Wherever you go, from the north to the south of the country, doctors are worried about ‘the fever’--it’s probably typhoid,” said Aldo Benini, head of the International Red Cross office in this southern city. Typhoid, an infectious disease carried in water, has replaced diarrhea as the main health hazard threatening the Iraqi population.

Meanwhile, the United Nations Children’s Fund, known as UNICEF, reported that 11% of Iraqi children are moderately or severely malnourished in “pre-urban” areas--small settlements on the edges of big cities like Basra.

Health workers say infants are the worst affected because poor families cannot find baby formula at prices they can afford.

Most Iraqi families now depend for basic foodstuffs on the government ration system. Adults receive about 20 pounds of grain and about a quart of cooking oil a month at subsidized prices. They must buy protein foods and any extra grain at free-market prices up to 70 times those in government shops.