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Baghdad: Warning that in Iraq diarrhoea is a major killer, the United Nations International Children's Education Fund (UNICEF) has reported much higher rates of the disease than this time last year.

"While diarrhoea may sound trivial, in Iraq it kills," UNICEF spokesman Geoffrey Keele told a briefing on June 13 in Baghdad, noting that prior to the latest war, 70 per cent of all child deaths in the country were due to diarrhoea and respiratory infection.

Keele said there were now 66 confirmed cases of cholera, one of the most deadly of the diarrhoeal- related disease, in the Southern city of Basra, 79 per cent of them children under five years of age. There were also clinically confirmed cases in Nasiriya and Missan, but they had yet to be confirmed through laboratory tests, due to a serious lack of required medical equipment.

Dysentery and typhoid were also becoming a real problem for children, Keele said, with doctors at hospitals around Baghdad reporting an increase in dysentery.

Typhoid was also being seen within the capital, raising concern over the current impossibility to track the number and location of the outbreaks. Before the war and the collapse of the health system, there was rigorous surveillance of typhoid and other diseases that affect children.

To assist Iraqi children afflicted with these diseases, UNICEF is providing hospitals with intravenous fluids and oral rehydration salts (ORS) so children can recover. For instance, UNICEF has sent enough ORS to Karbala to treat 25,000 children dehydrated from diarrhoeal disease. The agency has also provided enough ampicillin to hospitals in Baghdad to treat roughly 1,000 children for typhoid, and enough drugs and medical supplies for 50,000 patients in al-Ramadi in Anbar governorate.

On a more positive note, the UN World Food Program (WFP) reported that the first distribution of food rations to be done at a countrywide level since the beginning of the war was proceeding smoothly in all governorates.

WFP's deputy executive director Jean Jacques Graisse, was set to start a visit to Iraq on June 15, during which he would stress three main objectives for the rest of the year: organise shipping, transport and delivery of food commodities from donors and the oil-for-food program to government silos and warehouses; provide some 480,000 tons of food each month for five months; and complete a vulnerability assessment map study to identify vulnerable groups that may assist the Iraqi authorities in designing a social safety net for people in need.