| March 27, 2003 | Thursday | Muharram 23, 1424 |
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More of paranoia
Resurgence of TB
LONG before the US-led invasion of Iraq began last week, the Iraqis were already in the grip of a grave humanitarian crisis. The United Nations Security Council clamped extremely rigorous and wide-ranging economic and military sanctions on Baghdad in August 1990 as a form of punishment for its invasion and occupation of neighbouring Kuwait. The 1991 Gulf war to oust Iraqi forces from Kuwait and twelve long years of devastating sanctions thereafter, have claimed nearly two million innocent Iraqi lives — a majority of them children. Shortages of essential medicines, electricity, safe drinking water, outbreaks of epidemics like cholera, malaria, typhoid and gastroenteritis, and simply malnutrition and hunger have since been acute and widespread in this once affluent country. Much of the human suffering and economic depredations that have been inflicted on Iraq could have been avoided had the sanctions been lifted years earlier as was demanded by many governments, and not prolonged beyond its logical limits as a deliberately intended punitive measure for the harassment and ouster of the Saddam regime. The on-going war only compounds the already acute and widespread problem of hunger, disease, malnutrition and lack of medicines and confronts the international aid and relief agencies with an impending humanitarian disaster.
Statistics regarding the extent of the existing crisis gathered by various UN agencies and rights groups paint an appalling picture of the problems facing Iraq. The country’s Gross Domestic Product saw a drop of 75 per cent within a year of the imposition of the sanctions forcing its citizens to scale down their daily intake of calories from 3,372 to under 1,000 per capita. Today, 65 per cent of Iraqi children are malnourished, out of whom 39 per cent are stunted for life. The infant mortality rate has soared to nearly 200 per 1,000 live births. A vast majority of the Iraqis have been left utterly impoverished, having been forced to sell everything they once owned just to stay alive. The first Gulf war left Iraq’s once sophisticated civic infrastructure in a shambles. Thirteen of the country’s 20 power stations were completely destroyed and the remaining partially operational units were working only at four per cent of their previous capacities. This resulted in the complete paralysis of factories and industrial units, water purification plants and the mechanized agricultural sector.
The humanitarian crisis was so severe that Baghdad reluctantly allowed the UN to start the oil-for-food programme, which, before it was stopped following the US-led invasion, was the only source of food for over 60 per cent of the population. One can well imagine the miserable conditions prevailing in most of the major Iraqi cities, which are now under siege by the coalition forces or have become active battlefields. The Red Cross and the UN have warned that the responsibility for safeguarding the lives of the most vulnerable sections of society — women, children and the elderly — rests squarely with the invading forces under established international conventions. The siege and pounding of Basra and Baghdad — Iraq’s two largest cities — and those of other Iraqi cities under attack by the Anglo-American forces, is about to add a more chilling dimension to the existing humanitarian crisis. All legal, moral and human norms of the civilized world demand an immediate end to the present immoral and unjustifiable war and restoration of food, water, medicine and other necessities of life to the millions of besieged Iraqis who have done nothing to deserve the kind of punishment that is repeatedly being inflicted on them.
THE move by America’s Justice Department to acquire powers to spy and eavesdrop on anyone living inside the country is very troubling and could well take that country down the authoritarian path. Under the new powers, granted under the so-called Patriot Act passed last year, the US government and its law enforcement agencies will be able to get records of customers from banks, phone companies, internet service providers, and credit card firms without having to first obtain a court order from a judge. What is worse, the Justice Department can now conduct investigations against individuals against whom there are no reasonable grounds to suggest that they might have committed a crime. The latitude provided by the passage of the Act will surely be open to misuse by a government that seems bent on going after the real or perceived suspects at home without the slightest regard for norms of law and justice.
Not surprisingly, the US government chose not to publicize this policy move, which became known only after a coalition of rights and civil rights groups in the US filed a lawsuit asking for the release of official documents on the subject. The Patriot Act was passed overwhelmingly by the US Congress in the wake of 9/11 without any debate and it is only now that many of its odious provisions are coming into effect. Fundamental principles of justice such as the presumption of innocence unless proved otherwise and the permission of a court before beginning a criminal investigation against anyone have thus been thrown to the winds by the Bush administration in its paranoiac concern about security. Not only is the use of such tactics illegal and immoral, but their effectiveness in terms of actually catching wanted terrorists is unproven and uncertain. The repercussions of the Justice Department’s augmented powers could be enormous and might end up further intensifying the prevailing atmosphere of fear and mistrust between certain ethnic communities in America and the administration.
PAKISTAN is among the countries most seriously affected by the deadly tuberculosis epidemic sweeping the globe. According to speakers addressing nationwide gatherings to mark World Tuberculosis Day on Monday, there are as many as 250,000 new TB cases every year in the country and some 60,000 die of the disease annually. Pakistan ranks eighth in the world in terms of the prevalence of the deadly disease. Globally, almost three million people die of TB every year, with some eight million contracting the disease annually. Given the scale of its prevalence, the World Health Organization declared TB as a global emergency in 1993 and launched a number of initiatives to control its spread. Among them is the Directly-Observed Treatment Strategy (DOTS) which is now being implemented in large parts of Pakistan. The DOTS strategy aims to cure patients, prevent the spread of drug resistance and reduce the transmission of the disease.
The highly contagious nature of TB makes it particularly difficult to control. Some 10 to 15 people are likely to be infected by the sputum of a single carrier if proper precautions are not taken. Other alarming developments include the rise of the deadly combination of TB and HIV / AIDS and the emergence of Multi-Drug Resistant (MDT) TB. The spread of drug resistant strains can be attributed to poor or partial treatment of TB patients with antibiotics, underlining the need for proper and sustained care. This is not always possible in a poor country like Pakistan. The health authorities must undertake a major initiative to attack the disease at every level. It is important to spread awareness about the highly contagious nature of the disease and to build partnerships with NGOs in order to improve access to adequate preventive and curative means. Above all, the preventative aspect of the problem must be emphasized so that the spread of the disease can be stopped before it takes on the form of an even more serious epidemic.