Caring for Caregivers in Baghdad

 

Baghdad Resolve:  To Improve Education and Training for Oncology Nurses

 Kids understood this project in 2001.  When children heard someone in another country was sick and needed help,  they responded. 


There has been a crisis for children in Iraq since the First Gulf War.  Now 20+ years later there is still a crisis and we are still advocating for Iraqi children.


A drawing of Faisa Amir, age 8 (2001) in her Baghdad hospital bed, done by her brother for the Iraqi Children's Art Exchange.  Faisa suffered with ALL with bone marrow relapse; she died on January 25, 2001

We are working with two pediatric oncologists at Children’s Welfare Teaching Hospital in Medical City Baghdad.  CANCER, on top of everything else in Iraq!  You can imagine the difficulties parents face finding good quality care for their sick child.  And, perhaps you can imagine the challenges of providing care in what Dr. Mazin calls this exhaustive setting.

        

Dr.Mazin, Miriam Thamer, age 8 (2014) and Dr. Salma

Some 160,000 children around the world are diagnosed with cancer every year, more than half of them will die.  The majority of deaths will occur in countries like Iraq, low and middle-income countries, where the survival rate is sometimes as low as 20% compared with high-income countries where the survival rate can be more than 80%.  Experts say that nurses provide about 80% of care to patients.  Nurses are critical to good care.

Only 20% of nurses in Iraq are college graduates.  They need more education, they need training and support.  We hope to provide those things, which will mean BETTER QUALITY CARE and BETTER OUTCOMES FOR CHILDREN WITH CANCER IN IRAQ.  

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For more information:  www.iraqichildrensart.org