Belgian doctor treats injured British cameraman

While Americans leave injured Iraqis to die…

This morning an American tank fired at the Hotel Palestine, where most of
the foreign journalists who are not ’embedded’ with the British American
invasion force are staying. By chance Dr.Geert Van Moorter found himself on
the 15th floor of the hotel (the Medical Team of Geneeskunde voor de Derde
Wereld - Medicine for the Third World are staying in the nearby Sheraton
Hotel).

Geert : ’at first I didn’t realize that a bomb had hit the building itself,
only three floors below the one where I was. Then I started downstairs. As
an emergency doctor I am used to keeping my cool and calming down others in
emergency situations, which was what I did of course.
I accompanied a woman who was very upset, who was in shock, and helped her
getting downstairs. Only at that moment people came telling me that there
were casualties. A man of Reuters came running with a first aid packet of
medicines. Together with him I ran to the first injured person, a British
cameraman called Paul Pascual. I helped getting him into a car and carried
out a first quick medical examination. I soon saw that he was not in too bad
a state and wanted to wait for possible graver cases, but the driver was so
nervous that he tore away at once straight to the nearest hospital. Not
without taking risks as the bombing continued. Soon we arrived at the Saddam
Centre for Plastic Surgery. This is a highly specialized hospital, but like
so many other hospitals it had been prepared to cope with an influx of war
victims for several months already.

For six hours I joined the work at the emergency department, helping the
devoted Iraqi doctors Dr. Mehdi Abudi en Dr. Walid Al-Dun. That is how I was
able to observe the situation in the hospital from within. We lacked a
certain medicine needed for a correct general anaesthesia, and also the thin
thread which the surgeon wanted to use for mending a cut tendon in our
patient’s foot. In the middle of one of the operations electricity broke
down, so with it all the apparatuses to monitor the patient’s condition.
Using one lamp and a simple reanimation machine we carried on…
There is also a shortage of hospital staff, for a very simple reason : many
health workers just don’t get to the hospital anymore, or they have many
wounded or dead relatives, or they want to get their families into safety. I
saw the radiology technician wipe the blood from the floor, somebody who
just happens to live in the neighbourhood carry out the work of a nurse.
Certain hospitals have had to be evacuated because they are in the danger
zones. So the American war of aggression does not only offend the right to
live but also the right to receive medical treatment.’
’It was the anaesthetist’s story that impressed me most. The man had not
seen his wife and three little children for days on end. They live on the
road to Hilla, in the south. Yesterday the doctor went there for a short
time with the ambulance. On his way he saw a lot of corpses at the side of
the road, but injured people too. The latter were being ignored by the
advancing American troops ! One of the countless offences against
international law by the US ! And meanwhile CNN goes on showing images of
G.I.s shaking hands and distributing chocolate !
Fortunately the anaesthetist succeeded in taking four casualties to hospital
in his car, where they were treated in safety.

(The images of Dr. Van Moorter treating and accompanying the British
cameraman were shown the world over : Al-Jazeera, CNN, TF1, Cuban television,
and VRT, VTM, Belgian TV stations)