Health Consequences of the War in Iraq

Come hear the experts discuss the controversies surrounding the impact of the war on the Iraqi people, and debate solutions to the public health problems facing the region.

April 21st, 2007

9 am in Hatch Auditorium

1468 Madison Avenue

Mount Sinai Medical Center

New York, NY

9 AM Dr. Skip Burkle will open the conference with an overview of the health situation in Iraq.

In 2003, Dr. Burkle MD, MPH, FAAP, FACEP served as the Senior Medical Officer in Iraq on the Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) for the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, USAID. He also served as the Interim Minister of Health in Iraq during the relief phase of the crisis. On arrival, he faced a health sector that -- like the oil and electricity sectors -- was devastated by post-war looting and had lost much of its infrastructure to theft and violence. "I spent my time planning a surveillance system and figuring out how to decentralize it, so that it was not Baghdad-centric," Burkle said in an interview. Burkle's suggestions, which he had meticulously planned and researched, were never implemented. Two weeks after arriving in Iraq, the White House recalled him to the U.S. See a Washington Post editorial about the decision to replace Dr Burke.

10 AM Dr. Les Roberts will discuss his study titled, "Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: cluster sample survey".

Dr. Les Roberts, MPH, PhD, became prominent in the news just before the 2004 U.S. presidential election for his study estimating that 100,000 Iraqi civilians had been killed in the Iraq war, at a time when official U.S. government estimates were much lower. In October 2006, an expanded followup study was released that gave a point estimate of 651,000 deaths having occurred. President George Bush dismissed the new study, saying the approach had been "pretty well discredited". However, numerous statisticians supported the studies. Listen to an interview with Dr. Roberts responding to President Bush's statement.

11 AM Dr. Vic Sidel will provide a human rights perspective on the war

Dr. Victor Sidel, MD, (literally) wrote the book on the impact of war on the health civilian popluations, "War and Public Health", co-edited by Victor Sidel and Barry Levy, initially published in 1997 with a fully-revised second edition being released this year. He is a New York-based physician (at Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine) who co-founded Physicians for Social Responsibility in 1963, and has been a leader in the field of social medicine and human rights since then.

LUNCH WILL BE PROVIDED

1 PM Hear Dr. Thomas Burke moderate a panel discussion as the speakers debate the issues and controversies as they relate to rebuilding

Dr. Thomas Burke, MD, FACEP, Director for Global Health at Massachusetts General Hospital and part of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, will moderate. His unique perspective comes from over 7 years of experience with the US Army, including his work caring for over 28,000 refugees at Guantanamo Bay. A lecturer and writer, his essays are available online, providing insight into the human experience domestically and internationally. His most recent is "Our World's Mothers and Babies are in Danger".

Please join us! RSVP to Kesha.Kaufman@mssm.edu.
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