The five minute interview with Michelle Norris is a good one. However, if the NPR show were true to its title, “All Things Considered” should have also considered the much larger role that the US has had in interfering with health care in Iraq, rather than focusing on the so called sectarian strife as responsible for the health care catastrophe in Iraq.
A recommended read to compliment this interview is Dahr Jamail’s hospital report from a year and a half ago. Kudos to NPR for finally picking up the trail of the medical system catastrophe in Iraq.
Here’s what NPR says of the interview:
“All things Considered December 1, 2006 · Iraq’s Health Ministry is controlled by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s movement, under an agreement struck by ruling parties, and sectarian influence has impeded healthcare, according to Dahr Jamail, an independent journalist who’s been covering Iraq’s healthcare system for Inter Press Service, a nonprofit news organization focusing on developing countries.
Jamail says that in his interviews with doctors at 13 hospitals in and around Baghdad in 2004 and 2005, he discovered a highly politicized healthcare system in Iraq, as well as other challenges facing the country’s ailing hospitals.
Michele Norris talks with Jamail.”