Iraqi children die quietly as infections spread
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BAGHDAD (AFP) - For five days Samya Ilihadi has prayed over her son like a mechanical Madonna (news - web sites) at Baghdad's main children's hospital, waving a cloth over his sunken eyes and swollen belly to try to keep him cool.
Her five-month-old boy Hassan is just one of thousands of Iraqi children caught in a deadly outbreak of diarrhea and other infections which have erupted in the aftermath of the war.
They are being caused, especially in the capital Baghdad, by a vicious combination of water contamination, electricity blackouts which are rotting food, tonnes of garbage which have piled up in the streets and open sewage.
Many Iraqi children are also extremely vulnerable because they were malnourished even before the US-led war that brought down Saddam Hussein (news - web sites).
Hospitals looted by Iraqi mobs are also short of medicines and supplies.
With the weather getting hotter, infections are spreading like wildfire.
"We've had a bad outbreak of gastroenteritis cases among children which can make them lose all the water in their bodies and face death," doctor Ahmed Abdul Fattah said in a crowded ward at Al-Iskan hospital in the west of the capital.
"About 70 percent of all the children who come through the doors of my hospital are suffering from this," he said, gesturing to beds filled with small bodies next to glassy-eyed mothers keeping vigils.
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