On October 22, 1991, the International Study Team on the Gulf Crisis announced the results of its August 25-September 10 study of infant mortality and morbidity in Iraq. This was the second such investigation carried out since the end of Desert Storm, and its findings proved far more ominous than the first, the Harvard Study done last May.
The recent study concluded that Iraq's child mortality rate has more than tripled since the end of the war. Nearly one million of Iraq's children under 5 years of age (29 percent) are significantly undernourished. And many children show signs of severe psychological trauma; two-thirds of school-age children believe they will not live to adulthood.
Thirty-five researchers from 13 countries, many from universities in the United States and Britain--with assistance from scores of people in the region--conducted the study. Joe Nangle of Sojourners interviewed one of the leaders of the team, Dr. Tim Cote, who works at the National Cancer Institute, a branch of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). A graduate of Howard Medical School and Harvard University, where he received his masters in public health, Cote was an epidemiologist, assigned by NIH to the study of AIDS worldwide, when this article appeared. --The Editors
Sojourners: How did you become involved in this study of the situation in post-war Iraq?
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