DU weapons:
the effects in Iraq

By early in 1992, there was an alarming increase in the number of babies that were born with deformities, and the number of people with cancer, especially young children. Doctors did not understand why this was happening. It was not until 1993 that the use of DU weapons against Iraq became known.

If someone has a DEFORMITY, some part of their body is not the normal shape.

Very high radiation levels

In the city of Basra, the radiation level in plants and animals is as much as 84 times the level that the World Health Organization says is safe. One of the doctors at Basra General Hospital has taken photographs to record all the babies who have been born with deformities. The pictures are horrifying: babies without eyes, without brains, without arms, without legs, without sex organs, babies with internal organs on the outside of their bodies.....

Since the Gulf War, the number of cancer cases in Iraq has increased by up to 10 times. If cancer cases continue to increase at the same rate, it is estimated that 44% of Iraq's people will have cancer within ten years.

RADIATION LEVEL is a measure of the harmful energy received from nuclear reactions

Dying children can't get treatment

There is little that the medical system in Iraq can do because it has been destroyed by the war and the UN sanctions. Until recently even cancer drugs were banned because they contained tiny amounts of radioactive material.

RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL: something that gives off harmful forms of energy that come from the breaking up of atoms

Ray Bristow, a British Gulf War veteran with cancer went back to Baghdad. He could hardly believe what he saw there:

"I am a medic, trained to react with practicality, not emotion; I was surrounded by children dying of leukaemias and cancers who had access to no [treatment] or minimal treatment and all I could do was cry uncontrollably."

VETERAN: a person who served in the military during a war

LEUKAEMIA: a form of cancer in which too many white cells are found in the blood

Many people cry in Iraq

Esra is 17 years old. She lies in a hospital bed. She knows that she is dying of cancer. She cannot move, but she can cry. She has been crying for three weeks. She doesn't want to die. She wants to get well, to leave hospital and go home. She wants to live.

Two-year-old Ali does not even have a bed because there are not enough beds.

"This patient is beyond help, there is nothing we can do," the doctor said.

Ali's mother sits on the floor at the entrance to the hospital. She holds her dying child in her arms and cries.