Cholera Hits Baghdad

The benefits of the U.S. occupation keep growing for the Iraqi people.

More than 1,500 people have cholera in Iraq and the outbreak has spread from the north to Baghdad, where conditions are ripe for the disease to thrive, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday.

Some 29,000 cases of acute watery diarrhoea have been reported by Iraqi authorities since mid-August, including 1,500 confirmed as cholera, the United Nations health agency said. At least 10 people have died, all in the north.

WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib said a 25-year-old woman in Baghdad has contracted cholera, the first confirmed case in the Iraqi capital.

"For the time being, we have only one case (in Baghdad). It's likely that others will be identified," Chaib told a news briefing. She said the woman was in a Baghdad hospital and two other people with suspected symptoms were under investigation.

Claire-Lise Chaignat, the WHO's global cholera coordinator, said poor sanitary conditions could cause the disease to spread in Baghdad, home to some 7 million people.

"It's already an epidemic in the north. It is very worrying because parts of Baghdad have fragile water and sanitation systems due to the conflict. Pockets of the population are at high risk," the Swiss expert told Reuters.

These people have no clean water, not enough electricity and then we wonder why they hate us. They were better under Saddam Hussein. Having to say that and knowing it is true makes me sick. We destroyed a country and its people by choice.