PTSD is nothing new but has only recently come to public attention. The brain’s ways to deal with the horrific experiences of war continue long after the individual has returned to a ‘normal’ life.
It is not about weakness, nor is it an invention of the 21st century. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder – not exclusively tied to war – has been with humanity for centuries.
Silent Bombs are the repercussions of high radiation bombs that leave their marks even generations later and take a high toll on society. Depleted Uranium (DU) seems to be a dangerously subtle species of this shameful weaponry.
The term was used by a documentary about the effects of nuclear bombs in Kazakhstan („Silent Bombs: All for the Motherland“) but since then has taken the meaning of the irreversible damages of dangerous weaponry with a lasting effect on the health of human beings.
The state of health in Iraq has changed in the last decades. While 1980 among the best in the Middle East, medical facilities deteriorated and especially the south of Iraq began to suffer from malnutrition and water-borne diseases.
Syring ©Flickr Andres Rueda
In 2005, typhoid, cholera, malaria, and tuberculosis count to common diseases. During the 2003 invasion, approximately 12 percent of hospitals and Iraq’s main public health laboratories were destroyed. Today, sanitary conditions in hospitals are bad and there is need in trained personnel and medications. Per 10,000 population, there are only 15 hospital beds.