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Fallujah: City of No Children

Submitted by Tjadendevries on Wed, 01/19/2011 - 7:50pm


Fallujah: City of No Children

Bill Wilson
Scottish Left Review

    The horror of the effects of depleted uranium deserve to be heard in Scotland, argues Bill Wilson

    It was recently reported that doctors had advised women in Fallujah not to give birth. There are many medical reasons for infertility which might shatter the dreams of a young woman. It is not difficult to imagine how heartbreaking it must be for a woman who is advised that she can never bear children. But for the young women of an entire city - tens of thousands of them - to be advised not to give birth, how can one imagine such collective pain? But perhaps it does not matter - one life is a tragedy, a million a statistic? Certainly this episode attracted limited press attention. Media Lens highlighted an interesting contrast with the attention directed at the lady who chucked a cat into a bin - one cat confined for a few hours was a tragedy.

    This year the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health published a study, "Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005 - 2009" by Chris Busby, Malak Hamdan and Entesar Ariabi. The report concludes "results confirm the reported increases in cancer and infant mortality which are alarmingly high. The remarkable reduction in the sex ratio in the cohort born one year after the fighting in [Falluja] 2004 identifies that year as the time of the environmental contamination." It was this increase in the incidence of child cancer and deformities which resulted in women being advised not to give birth. Fallujah is not the only city witnessing skyrocketing rates of child cancer. "The rapidly soaring child cancer rate in the southern Iraqi province of Basra has prompted the officials in the country to open the country's first specialist cancer hospital for children in the province's capital. [...] Since 1993, Basra province has witnessed a sharp rise in the incidence of childhood cancer. 'Leukemia (a type of blood cancer) among children under 15 has increased by about four times,' said Dr. Janan Hasan of the hospital inaugurated on Thursday in the southern port city of Basra."

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http://www.sott.net/articles/show/221670-Fallujah-City-of-No-Children