Many American troops serving in Iraq have fallen victim to what has been diagnosed by the Pentagon as leishmaniasis, an endemic parasitic skin afflication caused by biting flies. Iraqis have also been beset with skin afflictions since the war started, but these have defied diagnosis.
“Dr Jinan at the clinic in Abu Ghraib says there are patients coming in with illnesses that she and her colleagues can’t diagnose. Patients are referred to the main hospital complex at Baghdad Medical City but they return with still no diagnosis and having had no treatment. In particular, there have been patients presenting with bubbles on the skin. They “become hot, like burning coals, get hard and spread.” She said they don’t understand it…
“In the row of houses closest to the airport fence every single household reported some kind of skin or breathing problem. Probably the most common was white patches on the skin, which started, for most people, between April and July. Or spots on the skin, which turn black and then the skin peels off. Or the blisters or bubbles on the skin that Dr Jinan mentioned, with or without fluid. Women brought us inside, away from the men, took off their hijabs and showed us bald patches on their heads…
“Immediately after the bombing of the airport, people said, thousands of trucks started removing the soil from the complex. No one can tell us where it was dumped. Other trucks brought fresh soil from elsewhere to replace it and tarmac trucks came in to cover it over…”
From Jo Wilding’s first-hand account, A Health Survey in Abu Ghraib