'IRAQ AND THE PERSIAN GULF' [‎267r] (536/862)

PUBLIC HEALTH AND DISEASE
409
now being made to increase the number of medical students. In 1936
there were still 10 British specialists and technical officers.
In 1935 there were 11 British nursing sisters in the large hospitals
of Baghdad, Basra, and Mosul. In Baghdad the Royal Hospital
nursing staff is superintended by 13 French Dominican nursing
sisters. The rest of the nursing service is Iraqi. Male dressers are
employed in male wards.
Education. The Royal College of Medicine of Iraq was founded in
1927, and housed in 1930 in new buildings close to the Royal Hospital.
A sound all-round medical education is provided, and by 1935 from
15 to 20 well-trained Iraqi doctors were graduating annually. The
college has since been enlarged and in time should make good the
inadequacy of medical aid in Iraq. The medical course lasts five
years. Clinical instruction is given in the Royal Hospital, where the
new out-patient department has an average daily attendance of 1,000.
In the precincts of the hospital are the new Central Pathological
Institute, the Vaccine Lymph Institute, the X-ray Institute, and the
Lunatic Asylum. All these contribute to the medical students’
curriculum.
Nurses are trained in a Baghdad nursing school and at the Basra
and Mosul hospitals. In Baghdad there is also a midwives’ training
institute. A health school in Baghdad trains subordinates as assistant
pharmacists, dressers, vaccinators, and sanitary inspectors, to take
charge of the smallest class of rural dispensaries. There were 287
such officials in the Health Service in 1934.
No medical officers are specially trained to organize and administer
the public health service of the large towns on modern lines, but the
importance of preventive medicine is beginning to be recognized and
plans are being made to develop it.
Hospitals. In 1943 public hospital accommodation, concentrated
in provincial headquarters, totalled 3,236 beds. The largest hospitals
are in Baghdad (625 beds), Basra (251), Mosul (227), Nasiriya (100),
and Sulaimaniya (84). The hospitals of Baghdad, Basra, and Mosul
are modern, and many of the smaller have been rebuilt in recent
years. There are separate isolation hospitals at Baghdad, Basra,
Erbil, Kirkuk, and Nasiriya, and Eye Hospitals at Baghdad, Basra,
and Hilla. The Lunatic Asylum at Baghdad provided for 140
patients. There is separate hospital accommodation for prostitutes in
Mosul and Basra, and a leprosy hospital with 220 beds at Amara.
Private hospitals, mostly at Baghdad, have 256 beds, while the
I.P.C. have their own hospital at Kirkuk.