Medical clinic renovation in the south

The opening of the Hay Al-Jihad clinic (previously called Al-Samoud) earlier this month has been good news for around 117,000 residents of that area of Al-Amnal Dakhilay, southwest of Basra city in the far south of the country. Dr Abdel Salam Jasim, the head of the renovated clinic, told IRIN that the centre had not seen any renovations since it was built in 1994. "This is true of this centre and most of the others around the southern region because of the years of sanctions. We mainly relied on international NGOs to get some modern equipment. Some NGOs donated some air-conditioners and medical equipment, but now with the current security situation they are hardly here." According to a spokesperson from the Multinational Division (MND) forces, on 19 July a health team from the MND forces visited the Al Samoud clinic. Work started immediately and was completed in early September "The opening was delayed slightly as it was sparsely equipped with furniture and equipment. The clinic was like most clinics in Basra, in a very poor and under equipped condition. Now, finally, the staff continue to function with poor resources and a further proposal has been submitted to fund the provision of new equipment and furniture." "The centre cannot be compared to its previous state. The walls are painted and the electricity wires are in better shape but the machines we are using are quite old. There is also a shortage of medicines that most of the clinics' pharmacies suffer from," said Radi Sadkhan, a dentist at the centre. "We are already used to working with old medical equipment but the renovations are a good start. We were about to make good contacts with some international NGOs but then, after the security situation deteriorated, the local people working for these organisations couldn't take a lot of decisions." The contractor, Engineer Dhafir Al Abood of Al Pasha Company, who is working with MND and the Health Ministry on medical centre renovations, told IRIN that "the security situation started to reduce the activities of the British forces who usually have to visit the centres themselves before they decide the priority for renovations". Almost 90 percent of the health clinics had been renovated in the last five months, according to Dhafir. "We made reports about the medical centres in the governorate with the help of the Health Directorate and the NGOs working in the field of rehabilitation so that we could cover as much as we can from the centres and also parts of the main hospitals. The only problem is that there are limited budgets for each centre so that we can never do all the renovations. Usually the furniture and the equipment stays the same." Fares Nigm, head of the Engineering and Maintenance at the Ministry of Health, said that most of the 85 medical centres of Basra Governorate have been renovated. There are eight hospitals in Basra, four inside the city and four in the suburbs. Hospitals in the south are fairly old. The last one built in Basra was opened in 1991. Dr Karim Al-Emara, deputy manager for the Health Directorate in Basra, told IRIN that although Basra is the second city after Baghdad in terms of population, the number of medical centres and hospitals are not sufficient. It's not enough just to renovate the clinics. We also have to build new ones, which we are trying to do right now according to a ministry plan. We are getting funds soon from the ministry to equip the clinics, but as for the medicines, we can't do much. The whole country suffers from a shortage of medicines. All of them have to be tested in Baghdad and there haven't been a lot of imported medicines."