January 16, 2023
Baghdad / Obelisk: The health sector in Iraq is still suffering from poor service, despite the huge number of employees, the huge number of graduates of medical and pharmacy faculties and health institutes, and the billions allocated funds.
For many years, the lack of health services and the lack of infrastructure, medicines and medical devices has been observed in most hospitals.
Citizen Haifa complained about the flooding of a hospital in Baghdad after the recent rains, saying: Where are the government’s services towards the people?
With regret, the activist Muhammad tells his story in a hospital: a while ago, my brother underwent an operation to remove kidney stones, and I was accompanying him. The condition of the hospital, to say the least, is unfit for humans.
What has brought the health situation to this low level is rampant corruption and theft of medicines and medical equipment, in addition to counterfeit medicines.
A spokesman for the Iraqi Pharmacists Syndicate, Muhammad Sheroukhan, said that the percentage of counterfeit medicines in Iraq is estimated at about 5%, indicating that the majority of counterfeit medicines come to Iraq from China and the smuggling process to Iraq is carried out by organized gangs and smuggling mafias.
The poor quality of treatment and the lack of medicines pushed thousands of Iraqis abroad for the purpose of treatment.
Statistics indicate that more than 540,000 Iraqis have traveled to India in order to obtain treatment, in addition to the amount of attention given to the patient, in addition to the modern hospitals.
According to the information, the average stay of the Iraqi traveler in India for the purpose of treatment is 22 days, during which he spends on food, housing, transportation, and hospital treatment, as more than a billion dollars were spent during the past years on their living and the bill of Indian hospitals, and all these expenses are currency outside Iraq .
Human rights activist Hamsa Al-Hamid says that there is no health insurance in Iraq, and there are no medicines in hospitals, and the diagnosis is always wrong.
The employee, Zahraa Ali, commented on Twitter: Private hospitals in which all the needs of the citizen are available, but with huge money that the poor citizen cannot pay, and also.
The figures indicate that Iraq allocates about 5 billion dollars annually to cover the needs of the health sector, but the Iraqis believe that the health sector is still lagging behind.
Prepared by Muhammad Al-Khafaji
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