Caritas Relieving Iraq's Ongoing Health Emergency

BAGHDAD, Iraq, MAY 5, 2003 (Zenit.org).- Caritas International is offering emergency medical aid to postwar Iraq.

On Saturday, Caritas-Iraq's warehouses here received a convoy of medical aid sent by the Caritas network. The convoy left Amman, Jordan, the previous day, Caritas sources told ZENIT.

Two trucks transported antibiotics, anesthetics and basic clinical equipment valued at $335,000. The material is being distributed among aid centers run by Caritas-Iraq.

According to Faiq Bourachi, director of Caritas-Iraq, "we hope that these supplies will help to relieve the most urgent needs of the Iraqi people."

"Security in the city continues to be a problem, but we have taken the necessary precautions to guarantee the distribution of this dispatch," he added.

Bourachi said that Caritas' health centers were overwhelmed with patients, but the arrival of the dispatch "will help the medical personnel respond adequately to them all."

Caritas' network also sent another shipment of health material from Turkey to the areas of Mosul and Kirkuk, in northern Iraq. A third dispatch of aid will leave Syria within days for Mosul.

The work of the Caritas-Iraq centers in the north has been supported, since the start of the war, by a mobile medical team of Caritas' international network.

ZE03050502
5. mai 2003