Now what? Nothing, Just Cholera!

I am completely swamped at school and work, but I couldn’t resist writing this entry. It’s just hard for me to imagine how miserable life continues to be in Baghdad. Every time I say it won’t get worse than it is now since it’s already miserable, something worse shows up.

As if what people are facing these days is not enough, a new phobia descended in the streets. It’s the cholera! I was completely shocked. What?! We are not in the Middle Ages! But then I thought about the “achievements” Maliki and his buddy Petraues boasted about every now and then and found nothing. Nothing. Simple life requirements. Nothing. No electricity, no security, no jobs, nothing. And now what? Even water is contaminated.

The New York Times: BAGHDAD, Sept. 11 — A cholera epidemic in northern Iraq has infected approximately 7,000 people and could reach Baghdad within weeks as the disease spreads through the country’s decrepit and unsanitary water system, Iraqi health officials said Tuesday.

The World Health Organization reported that the epidemic is concentrated in the northern regions of Kirkuk and Sulaimaniya and that 10 people are known to have died. But Dr. Said Hakki, president of the Iraqi Red Crescent Society, a relief organization that has responded to the epidemic, said that new cases had turned up in the neighboring provinces, Erbil and Nineveh, indicating that the disease had spread.

The news of the spread of the epidemic in Suleimaniya has reached Baghdad and left its people with fear worse than the one they experience when a car bomb explodes. At least in explosions, you die and go to the grave. But if you get Cholera, you’ll suffer and then die. I know my parents and my sister’s family have been using bottled water for the last few years. They are able to afford it because they have jobs. But what about the jobless? The unemployed? How are they going to be able to drink clean water if they barely afford food? What about the kids in schools drinking from tap water? They are kids. Even you tell them not to drink from there, they would because they don’t know the grave danger it possesses.

The New York Times: [Iraq’s deputy health minister, Dr. Adel Mohsin] said that further spread of the epidemic was “very likely”[in Baghdad] unless government agencies followed strict guidelines on water testing and maintaining sufficient levels of chlorination, which kills the bacteria.

What has this government done? Seriously? Nothing? Where is the ministry of health? Weren’t there supposed to be health officials visiting the municipality to check if the water falls into the required standards?

Dr. Hakki, of the Red Crescent, said that shallow wells contaminated by sewage around Sulaimaniya — which had at least two cholera outbreaks in the decades before the American-led invasion in 2003 — could have set off the epidemic. But problems that have developed since the invasion, like poor control of chlorination levels, have the potential to make this outbreak more dangerous, he said.

OK, now: where is all this rosy life in Kurdistan which the Central Government, Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government and the Americans were boasting about? Contaminated water in the safest area in Iraq? Were there insurgents there? Were there bombs there? Were there sabotages? Seriously? Where is money going? Where are the health officials? The KRG is busy with investments by the time people drink dirty water? Now an epidemic is spread from the safest region to the unsafe region?

That’s another blow. I don’t know what else might happen.

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