A Sick Country

[Amelia]

Gender issues worsen Iraq's medical woes

Doctor: A man would prefer his wife die in labor than be touched by man

Associated Press

May 25, 2009

SAQLAWIYAH, Iraq - This part of Iraq, says Dr. Ayad al-Hadithy, is so conservative that a man would rather have his pregnant wife die in labor than be touched by a male nurse or doctor.

It's just one of the difficulties faced by U.S. and Iraqi officials as they struggle to nurse the war-ravaged province of Anbar back to health. One showcase of their efforts is the reopening last year, for women only, of the Nursing School in Anbar's capital, Ramadi. Another is a field school in the town of Saqlawiyah that has just graduated its first batch of 10 female nurse's aides.

Nowhere are nurses more badly needed than in Saqlawiyah and its surrounding villages, where 50,000 people have no women doctors and only one female nurse and one midwife, both old and overworked.

The area's most recent records, from five years ago when the anti-U.S. insurgency was just beginning, show that one in five women dies in childbirth, and many women never even see a doctor.

The strictures on women as nurses stems from the province's strong tribal society and its puritan reading of Islam. But al-Hadithy, a 49-year-old mother-and-child care specialist, doesn't accept it.

"This is ignorance, not Islam," he said. "Nowhere does Islam say: 'Let your wife die.'"

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30926561/

[Gail]

Thumbs up for the doctor!