Calm At Hospital Reflects Baghdad’s Progress

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
Washington Times
September 18, 2007
Pg. 11
Decreased violence help empty emergency room, morgue
By Haider Salahudeen, Reuters News Agency
BAGHDAD — A row of beds lies empty in the emergency ward of Baghdad’s Yarmouk Hospital. The morgue, which once overflowed with corpses, is barely a quarter full.
Doctors at the hospital, a barometer of bloodshed in the Iraqi capital, say there has been a sharp fall in victims of violence admitted during a seven-month security campaign.
Last month, the fall was particularly dramatic, with 70 percent fewer bodies and half the number of wounded brought in compared with in July, hospital director Haqi Ismail said.
“The major incidents, like explosions and car bombs, sometimes reached six or seven a day. Now it’s more like one or two a week,” he told Reuters.
The relative calm at Yarmouk Hospital lends weight to U.S. and Iraqi government assertions that a security campaign started around Baghdad in February has achieved results.
In one emergency ward at the hospital, in a Sunni Muslim district of west Baghdad that had suffered disproportionately from sectarian conflict, just two patients were being treated. Neither showed signs of serious injury.
At the hospital morgue, only two of the eight refrigerated rooms contain bodies, many of them related to violent incidents that happened weeks ago.
Bloodstained floors in the empty sections were the only reminder of days when the morgue was so crowded that the corpses spilled out on to the ground outside.
“In the last month, there’s been a really noticeable reduction,” said surgeon Ali Adel. “Now most of the cases that come to us are . . . random gunfire and accidents.”
The security plan begun in February, backed by thousands of extra U.S. troops, was seen as a last-ditch attempt to stem four years of conflict that raged since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said last week that violence in Baghdad and surrounding areas had fallen by 75 percent, and President Bush said that “ordinary life is beginning to return” to the city.
Deputy Health Minister Amer Khozai said the picture from Yarmouk was reflected in figures from the main morgue in central Baghdad, where the number of bodies received had fallen from up to 180 on the worst of days to as low as 12 a day.
“The problem now is some cars exploding here and there . . . [but] it’s clear from the emergency departments in the hospitals that the situation is calm and stable in Baghdad,” he said.
Despite the improvement in Baghdad, violence still rages in other regions of Iraq, and Sunni Islamists from al Qaeda have promised a renewed campaign to mark the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which started last week.
As a Reuters television team filmed outside the hospital Sunday, an explosion less than a mile away shook the building, and a familiar black plume of smoke rose into the sky.
Within minutes, the first casualties were rushed into the hospital. In all seven bodies, including three elderly women, were brought in, and doctors prepared for a fresh influx of wounded.
 
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