Jordan Times
April 13, 2000

What about the incubators?
By Kathy Kelly
 

It feels oddly like being at a wake in a funeral home.
Our four delegation members whisper together as we
wait to tour the Al Mansour Children's wing at the
Saddam City Medical Centre. The Director is away, so
someone has been sent to find a senior doctor to brief
us. As I flip open my diary, it dawns on me that at
this time four years ago, March 1996, the first Voices
in the Wilderness delegation visited Iraq. 30
delegations later not much has changed within this
hospital. What must the doctors and nurses think as
one delegation after another hears the litany of
shortages and views the dying the children?
When a doctor finally enters the office, my grim mood
lifts immediately; it's Dr. Qusay Al Rahim, of whom
I've spoken so often, to so many groups in the U.S. My
companions meeting him for the first time will
probably feel the same warmth towards him as I, and
hold him in the same esteem. He draws forth a sense
that we're working, in concert, to solve intractable
problems, that even little gains, in the face of
ridiculous odds, are rewarding. I wonder how he
maintains his quiet, indomitable strength.

Two years ago, when I first met him, he solicitously
accompanied us up to his ward, apologising for the
elevator that didn't work, the hallways that were dark
because they had no light bulbs. Suddenly he raced
away in response to a furore down the hall. Hospital
visitors were shouting for help at the bedside of
Feryal, a 7-month-old baby, whose mother was sobbing
frantically. Feryal had just suffered a cardiac
arrest. Dr. Qusay swiftly bent over her and
administered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Feryal's
heart gave out in a fight against malnourishment plus
septicaemia - full body infection. The hospital lacked
both the nutrients and the antibiotics this little one
desperately needed. I watched Dr. Qusay face the
anguished mother to pronounce the verdict, ?I am
sorry, but your child cannot live. We have not the
oxygen, we have not the tube.? How many times, since
then, has Dr. Qusay felt shattered, having to speak
tragic words to disbelieving parents?

Now he is explaining to us that in a very real way he
thinks we are all fathers and mothers to these
children, that it's a challenge to invent new ways to
help them. And when something works, ?well, you see,
this keeps you hopeful.? He carefully details some of
the greatest problems they presently face - they've
run out of high protein biscuits formerly supplied by
UNICEF and they lack immunisations for MMR (measles,
mumps and rubella). Actually, sufficient batches of
the vaccine arrive, but electrical outages interfere
with proper storage, damaging the vaccines. So far,
his tone has been that of a kindly teacher, one who
wants us to understand.

But then he lowers his head and shakes it back and
forth several times. ?We had a terrible tragedy
recently. Our incubators are old and broken down, but
some we try to repair. We placed an infant inside a
patched incubator, thinking it would work, but the
sealant was faulty, and the baby grew very cold. In
fact, we lost that baby.?

I jot down in my notebook, ?Incubators - mom!!?
Shortly before the Gulf War began, I applied to join
the Gulf Peace Team, a non-violent, non-aligned
encampment that would position itself on the border
between Saudi Arabia and Iraq, between the warring
parties. The organisers placed me on a waiting list.
To my surprise, I learned that if I could be in Boston
in two days, I could join a U.S. contingent leaving on
a plane that would be the last to land in Baghdad
before the bombing began. I had just enough time for a
hurried visit to my parents. Of course, they tried
their hardest to dissuade me from going. As I flew out
their door, the last thing I heard was my mother
calling out, in her thick Irish brogue, ?What about
the incubators?! Kathy, what about the incubators?!?

She was referring to testimony from Nayireh, a young
Kuwaiti girl, who told the U.S. Congress that she had
witnessed invading Iraqi soldiers barge into a Kuwaiti
hospital and steal the equipment. With luminous eyes
and a compelling presence, she told of her horror as
she watched the menacing soldiers dump babies out of
incubators. Months later, when the war was a distant
memory, reporters learned that ?Nayireh? was actually
the daughter of a Kuwaiti emir, that doctors in Kuwait
could not corroborate her testimony, that in fact the
supposedly stolen incubators had been placed carefully
in storage during the invasion, and that the Hill and
Knowlton Public Relations firm had rehearsed with the
young woman how to give apparently false testimony
effectively.

The Desert Storm bombardment destroyed Iraq's
electrical grid. Refrigeration units, sewage and
sanitation facilities, and all sorts of valuable
equipment were ruined. Life-saving devices found in a
modern hospital were rendered useless. As the Allied
bombing went on and on, my mother's question became
more and more relevant, yet went largely unasked.
?What about the incubators??

Now, when our teams visit Iraq, following nine and a
half years of the most comprehensive state of siege
ever imposed in modern history, we see incubators,
broken and irreparable, stacked up against the walls
of hospital obstetrics wards. Sanctions have prevented
Iraqis from importing new incubators and from getting
needed spare parts to repair old ones. And this is
only one vitally needed item that sanctions prohibit.

Dr. Qusay's heroism is commendable. Earnest as ever,
he tells us of other methods he wants to pursue, in
the wake of the tragedy incurred by an irreparable
incubator. ?I have heard about, maybe you know it, the
kangaroo method and this they do in Australia. I tell
the mothers of tiny infants to try it. They can place
the baby between their breasts and wrap themselves in
a garment and this may keep the baby warm enough. Or I
tell them to try to find gauze and cellophane and with
this they might recreate conditions like an incubator.
You see, we must invent and try to cope.?

I wonder what would happen if Dr. Qusay testified
before Congress as Nayireh did 10 years ago. Would we
respond with the same moral outrage now that such
actions are American policy? Would we mobilise to end
sanctions with the same fervour that drove us to
destroy Iraq, and its incubators and its babies? Now,
as then, any mother, Kuwaiti or Iraqi can tell you
child sacrifice is wrong.

The writer is a the director of Voices in the
Wilderness, a non-profit making group opposed to the
sanctions on Iraq