------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the March 20, 2003 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
DOCTORS AND NURSES SAY: "WAR IS ALSO A HEALTH CARE DISASTER" By Nadia Marsh Doctors and nurses throughout the world are organizing against Bush's war. This is clearly reflected abroad in medical journals and the print media. Unfortunately, in the United States, one would never know that physicians and nurses are rallying in the thousands against war. The mainstream medical organizations and journals have been reticent to support the anti-war sentiment of health care professionals in this country. Increasingly, physicians and nurses are urging their medical organizations to take an official anti-war stance. In the past few months, the British medical journal The Lancet and other European and Australian medical journals have published numerous editorials and articles by physicians opposing the war. Many letters have been addressed to Prime Minister Tony Blair and the British Parliament admonishing Britain for supporting a U.S.-led war that will inevitably lead to the deaths of thousands of innocent Iraqi people. Public health organizations in the U.S. have also begun to speak out against the war. They have detailed the catastrophic effects a war with Iraq will have on its people, particularly women and children. They are citing a "strictly confidential" United Nations document that was leaked to an anti-war group at Cambridge University in England several months ago. Entitled "Humanitarian Scenarios," it has led to sobering revelations in the health care community as to how devastating a war will be. This document is based on research conducted by the World Health Organization for the UN. It predicts that casualties in the first phase of the war will be 100,000. That's 100,000 people dead or wounded in the first few days of the U.S. bombing campaign. Then another 400,000 civilians may die due to secondary effects of the bombing--infectious diseases resulting from destroyed and infected water systems, malnutrition and epidemics. Many of the dead, they admit, will inevitably be children. Although physicians in the U.S. have traditionally been less involved in anti-war and political organizing than those in Europe and developing countries, Bush's war drive has driven many health care providers to become anti-war activists. Like millions of people all over the world, doctors and nurses are joining a new anti-war movement to oppose their government's pro-war, pro-corporate agenda. The huge anti-war rallies in Washington and New York City in the past few months have demonstrated that health care workers are a large part of the anti-war movement. Local 1199 SEIU and nurses' unions representing health care providers brought thousands of health care workers out onto the streets. On Jan. 18, in Washington, D.C., a new activist organization was born-- Doctors and Nurses Against the War. When a physician from the newly formed organization read a statement on national television admonishing Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld for their violent proclivities against Iraq, hundreds of health professionals responded positively with emails and phone calls. On Feb. 15, at the very large rally in New York, Doctors and Nurses Against the War led a contingent of health care workers. They chanted, "Health care, not warfare!"--the favorite slogan of the day. Many were protesting for the first time. WHAT A WAR IN IRAQ WILL MEAN All essential services in Iraq will collapse. UN and nongovernmental organizations admit they will be unable to address a humanitarian situation of this magnitude. Some 30 percent of children in Iraq under the age of 5 will be at risk of dying from malnutrition. That comes to 1,250,000 children. Some 39 percent of the Iraqi people will have no access to water. Some 10 million Iraqi people will be malnourished and displaced The astronomical cost of this war-- estimated at $200 billion--will also contribute to the collapse of an already under-funded public health system in this country. Each second of war will cost $10,000--what New York City spends on educating a child for a full year. The cost of raining destruction on Iraq for eight hours equals one full year of the New York City Homeless Services budget--$360 million. Health care workers have a duty to stop this war before it starts. Join Doctors and Nurses Against the War at the national antiwar rally March 15 in Washington, D.C. We will gather at 11:30 a.m. at the northeast corner of the Washington Monument grounds. For more information, go to www.InternationalAnswer.org/ WarNotHealthy.html. [Dr. Nadia Marsh is a general internist who has practiced in New York's Harlem community for many years and is an organizer for Doctors and Nurses Against the War. ] - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe wwnews- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] Support the voice of resistance http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php) ------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. To subscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
