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  Living and Dying in Baghdad: One Day in the World's Most Dangerous City

Living and Dying in Baghdad One Day in the World's Most Dangerous City

Von Mathieu von Rohr, Hussam Ali, Ala Chalil Nassir and Bernhard Zand

3:05 p.m., MEDICAL CITY

Dr. Rafid, the young surgeon who works at the hospital in Medical City, is called to the emergency room. Wathba Square, the site of the bombing, is only two kilometers away.

The wounded -- 21 civilians, three police officers and two traffic policemen -- are brought to the hospital in ambulances, private cars and police vehicles. There are no extremely serious injuries among the people arriving at the hospital and though terrible, the attack could have been a lot worse. They were not standing directly adjacent to the explosion. Nevertheless, the emergency room erupts in chaos. The victims are brought in bleeding and screaming, and some, who must believe they are dying, start to scream even louder.

Then the same thing happens that always happens. The policemen who traveled to the hospital with their fellow injured officers compel the doctors to treat them first.

Rafid treats leg and back injuries, stops bleeding, and fends off the relatives who push him around, shout at him and beg him to help. Some of the doctors are forced to perform emergency surgery on the spot. All of the operating rooms are taken.

When larger attacks occur, circumstances in the hospital can get particularly grim. On some days, there aren't enough neurosurgeons on hand and doctors are forced to saw off limbs. Rafid has seen many things that he is unable to forget. Comparatively speaking, this day isn't all that bad.

The problem is that there is a shortage of everything in this hospital. There are no defibrillators, important drugs are missing and, of course, there is never enough blood to make up for the many liters of blood being shed every day.

The doctors are poorly paid, and those who can go abroad do. Most of Dr. Rafid's friends have already gone -- to Syria, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates -- but life there is more difficult than they had imagined, and most haven't found jobs.

+++ The Iranian foreign minister announces that representatives of Iran and the United States plan to meet in Baghdad to increase security in Iraq. "We hope that this will help reduce the pain of the Iraqi people," says the minister. +++

15 p.m., The Green Zone >>

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