Soaring Birth Deformities and Child Cancer

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It has been three years on since the invasion of Iraq, and there appears no end to the conflict. U.S. Launched its weighty so-called "Operation Iraqi Freedom" on March 20, 2003.The worst victim of the invasion is children. Reports indicate an alarming increase in birth deformities and cancer rates among Iraqis' children.

Us, emboldened with preliminary success in Afghanistan, invaded Baghdad to disarm Iraq of alleged Weapon of Mass Destruction (Wmd). The weighty invading force comprised of 214,000 Americans (including Naval, Logistics, brain and air force personnel), 45,000 British, 2,000 Australian and 2,400 Polish troops, adequately backed by hundreds of war planes.

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The healing emergency is being directly blamed on the wide use of depleted uranium (Du) munitions by the Us and British military in Iraq during Gulf War of 1991 and 2003's illegal invasion. The U.S. Is believed to have used 320,000 tons of depleted uranium during the Gulf War alone. Also British Armed military used depleted uranium in some of its ammunition.

Brain Cancer Statistics :Soaring Birth Deformities and Child Cancer

Up till now, the battlefield in Iraq remains a radioactive toxic wasteland -- and depleted uranium munitions remain a mystery. Many scientists sought to explore the events but Washington is reportedly blocking any effort to gawk the aftermath of war. Rather ignoring the proven telling impact on civilians' lives and health, the Us and Uk military continue Du's use even today. And this horror for Iraqi is unlikely to end soon as Us and Uk plan to prolong Baghdad's occupation for many years to come. President George W.Bush on many occasions has reiterated military will not be withdrawn until his designed mission is completed.

Cancer and birth defects rate in war-ravaged Iraq has increased tenfold. The increase is believed to be caused by laberious use of Du in populated and colse to areas. The rate of birth defects increased from 11 per 100,000 births in 1989 to 116 per 100,000 in 2001.It is soaring further. Children are falling ill with cancer at the rate of 10; one per 100,000. In districts where the use of Du concentrated most, the rate rose to 13.2 per 100,000.

Un's Integrated Regional facts Networks (Irin) quotes Dr Nawar Ali, a healing researcher into birth deformities at Baghdad University saying: "A total of 650 cases [birth deformities] since August 2003 have been reported in government hospitals. That is a 20 percent increase from the former regime. Underground hospitals were not included in the study, so the number could be higher."

His colleague, Dr Ibrahim al-Jabouri, reported: "In my experiments we have found some cases where the mom and father were suffering from pollution from weapons used ----- and we believe that it is affecting newborn babies in the country." The rise in birth defects is matched by a persisting increase in the incidence of childhood cancers. Seven years ago, the College of rehabilitation at Basra University carried out a study from 1976 to 1999 into the rate of cancer among children under the age of 15.It revealed a horrific turn between 1990 and 1999. In the province of Basra alone, the incidence of cancer of all types rose by 242 percent, while the rate of leukemia among children rose 100 percent.

The results were cited at the time in campaigns to end the Un-imposed and Us-enforced sanctions against Iraq, which were held responsible for the death of as many as 500,000 Iraqi children from malnutrition and inadequate healing treatment. Terrible as these results were, the last few years have witnessed a additional rise in the number of children under 15 falling ill with cancer and the rate has now reached 22.4 per 100,000 compared to rate of 3.98 per 100,000 in 1990. Iraq holds Us and Uk responsible for the devastating impact on civilians 'health caused by illegal wide use of Du.

The study noted: "Most doctors and scientists agree that even mild radiation is risky and increases the risk of cancer. The health risk becomes much greater once the [Du] projectile has been fired. After they have been fired, the broken shells release uranium particles. The airborne particles enter the body easily. The uranium then deposits itself in bones, organs and cells.

Many reports and political experts confirmed that more than 940,000 Du (depleted uranium) projectiles were fired during the war to evacuate Kuwait from Sadam Hussain's hold. The war cost oil producing Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other countries in the region more than billion (b) which they paid to Us. The war mandated by Un was backed by 34 western and other regional countries.

Children are especially vulnerable because their cells divide rapidly as they grow. In pregnant women, absorbed uranium can cross the placenta into the bloodstream of the foetus. A article said: "In expanding to its radioactive dangers, uranium is chemically toxic, like lead, and can damage the kidneys and lungs. Perhaps, the fatal epidemic of swollen abdomens among Iraqi children is caused by kidney failure resulting from uranium poisoning. Anything the follow of the Du shells, it is made worse by malnutrition and poor health conditions...."

Dr Janan Hassan of the Basra Maternity and Children's Hospital told Irin in November 2004 that as many as 56 percent of all cancer patients in Iraq were now children under 5, compared with just 13 percent 15 years earlier. "Also," he said, "it is paramount that the number of babies born with defects is rising astonishingly. In 1990, there were seven cases of babies born with multiple congenital anomalies. This has gone up to as high as 224 cases in the past three years."

The statistics point to the long-term consequences of depleted uranium contamination. Munitions containing an estimated 300 tonnes of Du were unleashed by coalition military in southern Iraq alone in 1991. A decade after the war, Du shell holes are still 1,000 times more radioactive than the general level of background radiation. The surrounding areas are still 100 times more radioactive. Experts guess that fine uranium dust has been spread by the wind, contaminating swathes of the surrounding region, along with Basra, which is some 200 kilo-meters away from sites where large numbers of Du shells were fired.

A 1997 study into the cancer rate among Iraqi soldiers who fought in the Basra area during the Gulf War found a statistically essential increase in the rate at which they were stricken with lymphomas, leukemia, and lung, brain, gastro-intestinal, bone and liver cancers, as compared to personnel who had not fought.

Somewhere between 1,000 and 3,000 tonnes of Du was expended during the three-week war in 2003. Unlike 1991, when most of the fighting took place outside major people centres, the 2003 invasion saw the wholesale bombardment of targets inside densely-populated cities with Du shells.

Christian Science Monitor journalist Scott Peterson has registered radiation on a straightforward Geiger counter at levels some 1,900 times the general background rate in parts of Baghdad in May 2003. The city has a people of six million.

Ever since 1991 war, cancer and birth blemish rates began to rise dramatically and the healing specialists fear that Iraq will continue to face an epidemic of cancers, under conditions where the healing system, devastated by years of sanctions and war, is unable to cope with the existing crisis.

The wide military debris, i.e. 8-12 million unexploded shells and grenades, contaminating water and soil will continue to cause an increase in cancer and birth defects in the newborn for at least an additional one century, healing analysts say.

The continued sanction, imposed on Iraq at the behest of Uk and Us, has accentuated the agonies of Iraqis manifold. The sanctions wreaked unparalleled devastation in Iraq's economic life. A senior Un official reportedly termed the sanctions as "genocide" by systematically starving the country of elementary needs. Sanction crunches killed an estimated 1.5 million Iraqis.

Yet, Us alone, as a powerful member of the U.N. Iraqi Sanctions Committee had all along opposed the calls for a lifting of sanctions and vetoed over 5,000 quite genuine and legitimate food or rehabilitation contracts. They placed " hold" on the import of $ 5.3 billion (b) worth of essential goods in early 2002.

By1993 the Iraqi economy under sanctions shrank to one-fifth of its size in 1979 and Un under the oil-for-food programme fixed the every year ceiling at $ 170 per Iraqi. Out of this sum a additional was deducted and diverted to the Un payment Commission to pay any government, outfit or private who claimed to have suffered in Iraq's strike on Kuwait.

Under "humanitarian goods" only food and medicine's import was allowed. But the import of items needed to restore water supply, sanitation, electrical power, even healing facilities was prohibited.

Among the items kept out by American veto, on the grounds that they might have a military application, were chemicals, laboratory equipment, generators, communications equipment, ambulances (on the pretext that they include communications equipment), chlorinators, and even pencils (on the pretext that they include graphite, which has military uses).

Between 1991 and 2000 Us and Uk fighter planes flew more than 280,000 sorties in 'no-fly-zones' to spy and enforce sanctions strictly. However Iraqi planes were prohibited to fly over the zone. After the retirement of Un weapons inspectors in 1998, the midpoint monthly release of bombs by Uk and Us planes rose dramatically from seven and 14 tons per month-reaching a pre-war peak of 54.6 tons in September 2002. Some 100 air force bombers were deployed bombs on 5thh September 2002.These wide bombings reportedly "hit civilians and essential civilian infrastructure, as well as livestock", cites Anthony Arnove in his book: "Iraq Under Siege: Ten Years On", Monthly Review, December 2000).

Even the Economist (London), an eager supporter of American policies towards Iraq, described conditions in the besieged country by the year 2000 as: "Sanctions impinge on the lives of all Iraqis every occasion of the day. The tap-water causes diarrhoea, but few can afford the bottled sort. Because the sewers have broken down, pools of stinking muck have leached through the outside all over town.

That effluent, combined with pollution upstream, has killed most of the fish in the Shatt al-Arab river and has left the remainder unsafe to eat. The government can no longer spray for sand-flies or mosquitoes, so insects have proliferated, along with the diseases they carry".

The Sydney Morning Herald in its up-to-date issue has quoted Dr. Amar, the deputy head of the Al-Sadr Teaching Hospital in Basra, one of the main hospitals treating Iraqi cancer patients, saying "We don't have drugs to treat tumours. I have a patient with tumours who is unconscious and I don't have drugs or a bed in which to treat him. I have two women with industrialized ovarian cancer but I can give them only minimum doses of only some of the drugs they need".

"Two or three days ago we had to cancel all surgery because we had no gauze and no anaesthetics. Our wards are like stables for horses, not humans. We can't properly detach patients or conduct their diets. We don't have allowable laboratory facilities.... "If you are sick don't come to this hospital for treatment. It is collapsing colse to us. We're going down in a heap", Dr Amar added.

During the 1970s and 1980s Iraq was ordinarily regarded as having good nutrition, but health problems only emerged when the security Council imposed wide sanctions. Iraqi children malnutrition has doubled since the U.S-led invasion in 2003. In reporting the 7.7 percent malnutrition rate for Iraqi youngsters, the Norwegian-based Fafo form for Applied collective Science said last November that the frame was similar to the levels witnessed in some African countries.

Last year, Carol Bellamy, head of Unicef, said the violence hampers the delivery of adequate supplies of food. This is also endorsed by aid groups active there. A U.S study in October 2004 estimated as many as 100,000 more Iraqis, most of whom are women and children, have died since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. The number is higher than those who would have usually have died, based on the death rate before the war was launched in crusade of so-called Nuke.

The preliminary justification offered by invading Us-Uk for the invasion was alleged Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction. The wide investigations carried by Un and Us weapons inspectors proved the allegation naturally "hoax". Then the world was told that Saddam Hussein's regime had links with Al-Qaeda. This was also a perfect fallacy.

After this the so-called champion of democracy and human proprietary Uk Prime priest Tony Blair and U.S. President George W. Bush cited Saddam's human proprietary abuses, but the world knows those in Iraq today are far more worse.

By now the world is convinced that, the real guess for war was to fetch direct operate of the vast supply of oil in Iraq. Iraq is endowed with the world's second largest reserves at gift 115 billion(b) barrels. And it is estimated that long delayed exploration may take the frame to 220-250 billion barrels.

Another guess widely reported in the American press is that the United States plans to use the invasion of Iraq as a launching pad for a drastic re-shaping of West Asia, apparently to ensure hegemony of nuke-equipped Israel to protect Us interests in the region in the long term.

Israel is reported to possess between 400--600 weapons of Mass Destruction (Wmd) but the west is miniature implicated over the huge Wmds nearnessy in the neighborhood of Muslim states. Israel backed militarily and financially by its creators-Us and Uk-- has waged series of bloody wars against Muslim beighbours and busy vast tracts of lands since 1948. Israel made wide use of Us supplied depleted uranium shells in southern Lebanon in its nearly five-week long disagreement with Hezbollah this summer.

The Us-led invasion of Iraq is widely described in Middle East streets as Israel's proxy. The perception gains ground as Israeli Prime priest Ehud Olmert has defended the Us invasion if Iraq and called it" a boon for Israel's security". "I stand with the president (Bush) because I know that Iraq without Saddam Hussein is so much best for the security and security of Israel, and all of the neighbours of Israel without any significance to us," Reuter reported Olmert as telling visiting American Jews in busy Jerusalem on Wednesday last.

The mid-term election losses of Us President Bush's Republican Party in November this year were widely thought about a repudiation of his decision to topple Iraq's Saddam Hussein as part of a so-called vision of democratising the region and bolstering allies like Israel. Iraq remains mired in a cycle of intense violence claiming midpoint more than 200 lives a day.

This has shattered Us mirage of creating democracy there, analysts said and quipped reports pouring in from over Iraq affirm that Iraqis irrespective of their sectarian divide "yearn" for a strongman to include the escalating violent situation.

Inter-Shiite-Sunni violence was virtually non-existent during Saddam's time, but within seven months of the illegal invasion the Iraqis were faced with a total breakdown of society: no food, 70% unemployed, hardly any electricity, polluted drinking water, hospitals without adequate drug supplies, crime increasing. In fact the Us-led ongoing war has tore apart the socio-economic and environmental life of the people, once thriving under Sadam Hussain. Independent healing journal the Lancet estimates more than 650,000 Iraqis have been killed and many more seriously injured since globally condemned illegal 2003 invasion. However, the invading Coalition played down the death toll at colse to 50,000 while their foisted Nouri-al Maliki cabinet health priest has admitted the toll between100,000-150,000!

Iraq or in Greek Mesopotamia flanked by two rivers- Tigris and Euphrates- once known as the cradle of human civilisation has widely been bombed and rampaged by the occupation forces.The destruction of 5,000 year old archaeological heritage in Iraq's small town Babylon is a tragic loss to humanity and brightly smears the face of invaders with rage and lust.

The head of the British Army, general Sir Richard Dannatt maintains our nearnessy in Iraq is making the situation worse. In fact, Iraq under occupation has come to be a breeding ground for unabated violence and terrorism with no end in sight.

But both Uk and Us leaders even amidst their ever-sagging popularity at home continue to boast that they are not going out of Iraqi as they do not believe in what Bush called " cut and run". Perhaps, they will commit more military to raise the power beyond 1,40,000 military level and bolster 14 high-priced Us bases, each the size of a small town, to ensure perfect hold on vast oil reserves for many years to come.

Of up-to-date the Us government has started giving the impression that their continued occupation of Iraq is essential to stop inter-sect violence, but there's evidence to suggest that the inter-sect violence in Iraq is in fact the deliberate follow of American course that started in October 2003, many analysts point out. Major American and British media corporations instead of reporting objectively have joined the campaign as" foot-soldiers" or embedded journalists in American cliché. This is amply demonstrated in Fox News, Cnn, Bbc and other so-called global networks heavily slanted broadcasts round the clock daily.

To get rid of illegal occupation and overcome deep wounds and unending agonies, political experts urge Iraqis to calm down their charged-emotion and understand the game-plan of the occupying forces. Iraqis must revert to their centuries old bond and cohesion and adopt a strong nationalist movement patterned on Vietnamese style to drive away the invaders. Current destruction of each other on sectarian-line naturally suits to the program of occupying forces.

Brain Cancer Statistics :Soaring Birth Deformities and Child Cancer

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