Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Decline of an Iraqi hospital

Psychiatric care in Iraqi hospitals has grown dangerously spare and, at times, near barbaric.

The Ibn Rushid psychiatric hospital in central Baghdad, once a jewel of Iraq's medical system, has been plunged into archaic conditions.

For patients who are suicidal or catatonic and do not respond to drugs, electroconvulsive therapy is administered by a 25-year-old machine.