Doctor Warns of Dying Iraqi Children : Medicine: U.N. sanctions blamed by Huntington Beach physician who will deliver $2,000 worth of insulin.

A Huntington Beach physician who is leaving for Iraq on Saturday with $2,000 worth of insulin said Wednesday that thousands of children continue to die there because of United Nations sanctions.

Dr. Jack Kent, a diabetes specialist and staff physician with the County of Los Angeles, said at a press conference that UNICEF, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, confirmed the death of 65,000 Iraqi children from malnutrition and disease from the war as of Dec. 18, 1991.

“As long as sanctions last, more children will die,” he said.

The U.N. sanctions, imposed last August, make it difficult for Iraq to get medical supplies, food, and equipment, Kent said. The destruction of Iraq’s electrical system by bombing is a key problem, he said, because electricity is needed to purify water, treat sewage and rebuild the country overall.

As a result, epidemics of cholera and typhoid have caused Iraq’s mortality rates to double, he said. An estimated 500 to 1,000 children die in Iraq each day from the effects of the war, Kent said. Kent cited the prediction of an international study team formed by two Harvard University graduate students that at least 170,000 children under the age of 5 will die in the next year.

“We can’t make political moves based on the sacrifice of innocents, which are the children,” said Kent, a member of the Save the Iraqi Children Committee. “Why should they be sacrificed ?”

Kent will travel to Baghdad and other cities in Iraq with members of the American-Iraqi Friendship Federation, based in Texas. The only physician in the group, he will take 200 vials of insulin, asthmatic sprays and disposable syringes which he will give to clinics and hospitals.

The supplies, which he said were purchased with donations from individuals, will help to keep about 200 diabetic children alive “for a month or two,” he said. “Most (diabetic) children require insulin or they die quickly.”

Kent called the offering a token but said, “I feel good about keeping children alive for a few months.”

Hanna Alwardi, a Pasadena artist also present at the press conference, said her brother in Iraq recently phoned and told her: “Iraq is dead. It’s not the same Iraq that we used to know. There’s no water, no electricity, no sewers. You see funerals every day.”

Kent said he also hopes to bring back information on the total effects of the war for the American people who, he says, have been “shut out” of information about how the war has affected the Iraqi people.

He said he hopes Americans will lobby to end the trade embargo “to make sure slaughter doesn’t continue to happen in their name.”