The Coalition of the Indifferent?

Tony Blair got a letter today, one that he won't be able to ignore.

It was signed by 100 British and Iraqi doctors, pleading for aid to stop the needless deaths of hundreds of Iraqi children for want of basic, and often cheap, medical supplies in Iraqi hospitals.


From The Independent:

"The doctors are backed by a group of international lawyers who contend that the conditions in Iraqi hospitals are a breach of Geneva conventions that require Britain and the US, as occupying powers, to protect human life.

"'Sick or injured children who could otherwise be treated by simple means are left to die in hundreds because they do not have access to basic medicines or other resources,' the doctors say. 'Children who have lost hands, feet and limbs are left without prostheses. Children with grave psychological distress are left untreated,' they add.

"They say babies are being ventilated with a plastic tube in their noses and dying for want of an oxygen mask, while other babies are dying because of the lack of a phial of vitamin K or sterile needles, all costing about 95p. Hospitals have little hope of stopping fatal infections spreading from baby to baby because of the lack of surgical gloves, which cost about 3.5p a pair.

"Cases the doctors highlight include a child who died because the doctor only had a sterile needle for an adult and could not find a needle small enough to fit the vein, and another child who died because the doctors had no oxygen mask that fitted.

"The doctors say the UK, as one of the occupying powers under UN resolution 1483, has to comply with the Geneva and Hague conventions that require the UK and the US to 'maintain order and to look after the medical needs of the population'. But, the doctors say: 'This they failed to do and the knock-on effect of this failure is affecting Iraqi children's hospitals with increasing ferocity.'

"They call on the UK to account properly for the $33bn (£16.7bn) in the development fund for Iraq which should have supplied the means for hospitals to treat children properly. They say more than half of the money - $14bn - is believed to have vanished through corruption, theft and payments to mercenaries."

Nearing four years after the invasion it is incredible to believe that the US and Britain, despite the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on this war of choice, have allowed Iraq's hospitals to deteriorate to this point. Incredible.