State Dept. Revamps Program to Tackle Iraqi Medical Issues
    By Thomas D. Williams
    t r u t h o u t | Report

    Monday 11 June 2007

    The US State Department is reestablishing funding for a popular and successful program to help busy Iraqi doctors and medical students learn the most modern medical techniques so they can save lives of soldiers and civilians alike under emergency wartime conditions.

    The project uses voluntary US doctors and other personnel to provide computer technology and training to medical personnel in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. Medical instructors at the University of California, San Francisco Medical School; Children's National Medical Center in Washington, DC, and San Francisco State University donated time to provide lectures, seminars and clinical assessments to the Iraqi doctors, nurses and medical students, organizers said. Now the program expects to add Mass General Hospital, California Pacific Medical Center and a host of American medical specialty organizations and institutions.

    "We have pulled together enough medical talent to address every conceivable health issue in Iraq," said Gary Selnow, a San Francisco State University professor and executive director of WiRED International, which is operating the project. Another new aspect to the operation, said Selnow, will be a special program to help Iraqi doctors treat the special diseases and injuries of children. "We're driven by the findings of a Save the Children report. That report found: "Some 122,000 Iraqi children died in 2005 before reaching their fifth birthday. More than half of these deaths were among newborn babies in the first month of life.... Iraq has made the least progress (of any country) in reducing child deaths since 1990."

    A second innovation, said Selnow, will be a women's health initiative in Iraq, focusing on breast, ovarian and uterine cancers, heart disease and other illnesses as they relate specifically to women. "We also will hold special video sessions with Iraqi female doctors," he said.

    In early June, Selnow said, a State Department official told WiRED it would receive $220,000 in federal funds to restart government assistance. Even though that was $20,000 short of what is needed for a year of funding, said Selnow, WiRED will try to raise the extra dollars necessary from several other federal agencies, and expects to do so. A State Department official who did not want to be quoted because the project still has not started up, confirmed that $220,000 in federal funds has been approved.

    "Someone at the State Department has been moved to find this money," said Selnow, "and for that we are grateful. We don't know the actual source of these funds. (But), this will enable us to restart the only medical education program in Iraq."

    Truthout reported in April that US State Department officials, without explanation, had cut off program funding less than a year earlier, in September 2006. Subsequently, department officials failed to respond to repeated requests to renew the crucial medical operations by officials of WiRED, located in Montara, California.

    Yet, in response to questions by Truthout about why department officials cut off funding for the critical medical advisory operations last year, Mary Thomas, a State Department media spokesperson, quoted an unidentified department official with commendations for those three-year efforts by WiRED. She did not explain why the official wanted to remain anonymous.

    In April, Thomas quoted the official as saying: "The department is grateful for WiRED's partnership with us to outfit four medical information centers with teleconferencing equipment to enable "live" telemedicine training seminars and workshops between US and Iraqi doctors. The initial successes of those telemedicine training sessions were an encouraging sign of the program's viability. Sadly, donated funds to cover the relatively high cost of satellite connectivity have proven to be elusive. We share WiRED's disappointment that they have been unable to raise funds privately for this activity."

    But, Selnow, responding to the State Department's official, but anonymous statement in April, said: "WiRED never said it would get private sector funding; that's silly on the surface." And Selnow added that he was astonished by the official's comment that the $7,000 cost for satellite connections was "relatively high." He explained: "I calculated that the US government (dollar) burn rate in Iraq is $231,481 per minute, or $3,858 per second, predicated on $10 billion a month (war budget) and a 30-day month. The connect time for our program would cost the USG less than two seconds per month and the entire program would cost 14 seconds per month. So, the sole medical education project in Iraq came at 'relatively high cost?"'

    In June 2003, the State Department heralded the Iraqi medical program in a press release "as part of a joint public diplomacy initiative with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs." And, continued the release: "Despite periodic power outages during the ceremony, more than seventy doctors, nurses and students packed the new (Medical City Center of the University of Baghdad) and flocked to the work stations following the formal opening."

    WiRED's Internet site, says the organization was founded in 1997 to provide "medical and healthcare information, education and communications resources to communities in developing and post-conflict regions. Its "technology information centers now serve nearly one million people annually, at 76 information centers, located in 11 countries on four continents," says WiRED. The organization was partnering with US Global Technology Corps, which "sends US citizen volunteers overseas to further the Department of State's strategic goals by introducing, implementing and fostering information and communications technology in technologically challenged environments."

    The unidentified State Department official insisted in April that the department has "great respect for the work of WiRED and their efforts as an (organization) linking lifesaving and enhancing medical knowledge with public diplomacy. The department, said the official, has "worked closely with WiRED, supporting a variety of program activities throughout [Iraq] to develop medical information centers at key universities and medical/nursing schools." One-time federal seed funding helped WiRED equip digital videoconferencing studios at four of these medical information centers, the official explained.

    "These studios were fully equipped and used for an ambitious telemedicine program beginning in 2006," said the State Department representative. But less than a year later, in September 2006, the department stopped its funding of the enterprising, potentially lifesaving program.

    "Even now," said Selnow, after the federally funded program was cut off, "we get emails from the doctors, pleading with us to resume the program. Further, we have support from the Iraqi Ministry of Health, and most recently a formal request to resume the program from the director general of Medical City Center, the largest teaching facility in Iraq."