IRAQ: Drive to get doctors to return

Photo: Mike White

The Iraqi Health Ministry has come up with incentives to encourage those who had fled the country to return to work

BAGHDAD, 4 August 2008 (IRIN) - The Iraqi Health Ministry has set up a committee to contact medical doctors who have fled the country, and persuade them to return, a senior health official said on 3 August.

[Read this report in Arabic]

“We have e-mailed all the physicians who fled Iraq because of the deteriorated security situation, [asking them] to return, and develop the health service, after remarkable progress in the security situation,” Deputy Health Minister Essam Namiq Abdullah told a press conference in Baghdad.

“The Ministry went through an acute situation as a result of the dearth of senior physicians… but now most doctors have expressed a readiness to return to their institutions and resume work,” he said.

Abdullah said the Ministry had devised incentives to encourage those who had fled to return to work - including help with travel costs and increased salaries. He did not elaborate.

Housing for doctors in Baghdad

The Ministry was also planning to build housing for doctors inside Baghdad’s Medical City, a compound in central Baghdad which houses the Health Ministry, Medical College, key hospitals and medical institutions.

According to Abdulla, over 165 doctors have resumed work in the past 20 days, and he expected that more than 90 percent of those who had fled would return this year.

The Ministry went through an acute situation as a result of the dearth of senior physicians… but now most doctors have expressed a readiness to return to their institutions and resume work.

Figures on how many doctors have fled since the 2003 US-led invasion have not been made available by the Ministry, but earlier this year it said 618 medical employees had been killed, including 132 physicians.

The Health Ministry had been funding hospitals in neighbouring countries to treat those patients it had not been able to treat in Iraq, Abdullah said: More than 1,400 patients had been sent to Syria, Iran, Jordan and India since June 2007 - mainly for cardiac and eye surgery, and the ministry was studying about 7,500 other patient files.

“Since the beginning of this year, we have managed to overcome about 50 percent of the problems we faced in the past,” he said.

Too early to return?

Up to now, the ministry’s incentives have not been sufficient to lure Jamal Ajil, who fled to Jordan in 2006, to return to Baghdad. But he still wants to return.

“It is still too early to go back,” Ajil told IRIN in an e-mailed response. “We all agree that there is an improvement in the security situation, but this thing is still fragile,” Ajil said.

“And the most important thing is the difficulties one would have leaving Iraq a second time if the security situation worsened again, because of the difficulty of getting Iraqi exit visas… I would prefer to stay until early next year and see,” Ajil said.

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