The Fourth Horseman Enters Baghdad

By Cernig

The Fourth Horseman, pestilence, has come to Iraq and now Baghdad in the form of a rapidly spreading outbreak of Cholera.

A woman has died of cholera in Baghdad, Iraq's health ministry says, the capital's first confirmed fatality in the country's recent outbreak.
The disease was first detected in northern Iraq last month.

Eleven others have died of cholera outside Baghdad, and at least 2,000 cases have been confirmed, the vast majority of them in the north.

...The World Health Organisation has warned that problems in ensuring access to clean water and food in Iraq could cause the disease to spread further.

A report by the UK-based charity, Oxfam, and the NGO Co-ordination Committee in Iraq (NCCI) warned in July that 70% of Iraq's population did not have adequate water supplies and that only 20% had access to effective sanitation.

adding to the problems of poor water sanitation, of course, are the lack of modern medical treatment and antibiotics that many Iraqis now suffer. If the Iraqis are really unlucky, the outbreak is of the antibiotic resistant 'O139 Bengal' strain first noticed in 1992. Even if it's the older strain, the last epidemic in South America, which began in Peru in 1991, caused 1.04 million identified cases and almost 10,000 deaths.

How can anyone describe this as success, four years and some into the occupation? Where's the surge to deal with this faceless and inhuman killer of innocents? Where are the billions in earmarked funds from the Bush administration?