UNICEF reopens Basra Nutritional Rehabilitation Centre

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said on Wednesday that the first of 20 Nutritional Rehabilitation Centres (NRC) currently being refurbished in southern Iraq, and established to tackle malnourishment in children, had now reopened. Allan Dow, a UNICEF spokesman, said the NRC at the Ibn Ghazwan Hospital in Basra had been refurbished, re-equipped and restocked, and was now ready to treat the 25 badly malnourished children currently in the hospital. The remaining centres are all expected to resume operations in the next few weeks. "At the moment, we don't know how many malnourished kids there are in southern Iraq, but we are carrying out ongoing assessment missions to determine the exact number," said Dow. "What we do know is that one out of every eight children will die before their fifth birthday." UNICEF originally opened the NRCs during the sanctions regime against Iraq in the 1990s to deal with the growing problem of malnourishment. Since then the centres have fallen into varying states of disrepair.