STATUS OF BAGHDAD HOSPITALS.

Progress, though slow, is still progress.

Baghdad's dilapidated hospitals are on the mend but patchy power supplies, rampant looting and shortages of medicine are slowing their recovery.

Doctors at some of the Iraqi capital's main hospitals said on Wednesday generous aid packages have boosted their stock of basic supplies and helped restore water and electricity.

But security lapses and the lack of specialised equipment and drugs were still hampering their ability to treat the thousands of patients streaming through their doors every day.

''Our problems are the problems of Iraq,'' said Dr. Ahmed Abdul Fattah, a chief administrator at the Central Teaching Hospital for Children, one of the biggest in the country...

Hospital staff conceded conditions were better under Saddam's rule despite the crippling U.N. sanctions levied on Iraq for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

But nobody is keen to relive those days of relative luxury.

''As long as that man and his regime are gone, then we are most certainly better off,'' said Yarmouk Hospital's Salman.