Repaired clinics now serve almost 350,000 Iraqis

(This article by Ben Barber, a writer for the U.S. Agency for International Development, was first published September 20, during a visit to Iraq. The article is in the public domain with no restrictions on republication. For more information on U.S. efforts to rebuild Iraq, please visit the USAID website -- http://www.usaid.gov/iraq)

By Ben Barber

BASRAH, Iraq (Sept. 20, 2003) -- Dr. Saja Farouk, 32, walks amid her freshly-painted and restored clinic and recalls how terrible it was before USAID arrived.

"The building was looted. Computers and even the doors were taken," said Dr. Farouk, administrator of the 11 clinics in the Al Maqal area of Basrah, serving 348,000 people.

"The electricity was damaged, the windows shattered and all furniture taken," she said.

Then a U.S. foreign aid contractor Research Triangle Institute (RTI) saw the damage and offered to spend $18,000 of USAID funds to restore the administrative building and clinic where Dr. Farouk oversees medical care for about a third of a million Iraqis.

"They rehabilitated the entire building," she said, as nurses, patients, doctors and aides fluttered around her in the hallways of her freshly-renovated office.

"RTI hired Iraqi contractors to fix everything and provide water pipes, electricity, furniture, computers, a refrigerator -- everything. We did not pay for any of it," she said. In the clinic next door to her administrative building, she showed a visitor a centrifuge provided by USAID that is used in the lab for medical tests.

Dr. Farouk, who was expecting to give birth to her own child within a day or two, said she still hoped that American aid would provide a few more things needed by her patients such as some medication which is in short supply and a photocopy machine.

RTI, she said, has also provided air conditioners and electric generators to two other clinics that were looted in the aftermath of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in April.

Before the arrival of the American aid, provided through the U.S. Agency for International Development working in conjunction with the Coalition Provisional Authority, "we could not work" in the looted buildings, she said as she hurried off to take care of her patients and direct her staff.

(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)