29 January 2008

Dubai: The Iraqi health care system has resorted to training its doctors in the United Kingdom as it did not receive any offers from countries in the Gulf.

"We are more than ready to welcome training programmes in the Gulf, but as yet we have not received any offers closer to home," said Dr Adel Abdullah, Inspector General, Iraq's Ministry of Health.

Prior to receiving aid from the UK, health officials in Iraq previously had a training programme offered by Japan where 800 doctors and nurses completed a three-year course based in Cairo.

Speaking on Monday at the four-day Arab Health Conference, Dr Abdullah explained that the Ministry of Health participated in a new initiative launched by the UK government in 2007 that aims to re-educate and train 400 doctors in Iraq for the next two years.

"We are concentrating on a quick fix by sending them to the UK and help them to catch up what they've missed in previous years," he said, adding that immediate action is needed to meet their immediate demands.

A batch of 25 doctors has been sent to the UK for a two-month training programme and currently 50 doctors have completed their training.

Dr Abdullah commented that the initiative will unlikely be an incentive in recruiting doctors who migrated to other parts of the world, including Dubai.

"Iraqi doctors who previously migrated need the reassurance of security, payment, residence and privileges, which is a difficult task at the moment because it is a programme currently under way. It may take years for them to come back," he said.

In 2003, 8,000 doctors were reported missing after being threatened by terrorist activities, killed or kidnapped.

Dr Abdullah noted that Iraq reached its peak in the 1970s as it was the main health service provider to the Middle East, but now has a large gap between its progress and the rest of the world as a result of three wars.

The Iraqi Ministry of Health has also adopted several measures to improve their services by using single wards instead of crowded wards to reduce infections, according to Dr Abdullah. "There are limited number of beds because of the large number of trauma cases, which has been tackled by setting up home ventilators to accommodate the large number of cases we receive."

Future projects include setting up an acute spinal injury centre and to construct a comprehensive local programme targeting professionals working at the Ministry of Health in Iraq.

In 2007, there were 217 hospitals in Iraq, 1,910 primary healthcare centres, 15,500 doctors and nurses, and a total of 150,000 paramedics. In 2006, hospitals catered to 100,000 injured people, 37,000 killed, offered 600,000 consultations and conducted 330,000 major operations. While in 2007, the numbers drastically diminished as hospitals received one-fifth of the numbers.

Improvement in the healthcare sector has also had a positive impact on the mortality rate of children under five years old, which was 128 for every thousand in 1999 as compared to 41 for every thousand in 2007.

By Mariam M. Al Serkal

Gulf News 2008. All rights reserved.