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Iraq's crumbling, corrupt healthcare
While Iraqis elected a new parliament this month, I sat in a half-empty hospital ward in Baghdad, fearing for my mother's life. Despite having planned to vote and to report on election day this year, I ended up casting aside my duty as a citizen and my desire as a journalist to stay at my mother's bedside.
For the preceding two weeks, a series of mysterious spasms in her leg had left her increasingly paralysed, crying in agony at the slightest movement. Our desperate search for treatment had taken us on a nightmare tour of Baghdad's corrupt and chaotic healthcare system.
My mother was seen by 10 hospital doctors and five private physicians, each of whom offered a different diagnosis. We spent hundreds of dollars and several sleepless nights taking care of her, only for her condition to steadily worsen.