The Japan Times Online

The Japan Times Online:

"More than two years after the Iraq war started, children continue to be its main victims as the health of the majority of the population continues to deteriorate. In the 1980s, Iraq had one of the best health-care systems in the region. Today it cannot respond to the most basic health needs of the population. In 1991, there were 1,800 health-care centers in Iraq. More than a decade later, barely half remain and almost one-third of those require major rehabilitation. U.N. Development Program's Human Development Index for the country has fallen from 96 to 127, one of the most dramatic declines in human welfare in recent history.

According to Jean Ziegler, the U.N. Human Rights Commission's special expert on the right to food, the rate of malnutrition among Iraqi children has almost doubled since Saddam Hussein's ouster in April 2003. Today, at 7.7 percent, Iraq's child malnutrition rate is roughly equal to that of Burundi, an African nation ravaged by more than a decade of war. It is far higher than the rates in Uganda and Haiti, countries also devastated by unrelenting violence."