"MEDICINE STOPPED"

And the Army picks up another mission not in its job description.

U.S. Army doctors are trying to repair the damage done to Iraqi medicine during the reign of Saddam Hussein when, as one doctor put it, “medicine stopped.”

The soldier/physicians held a three-day clinic this week on emergency obstetrics, and there is hope that such professional development classes will become regular events and cover a wide range of topics...

There is much for the Iraqi doctors to learn about obstetrics care. For example, they use Valium as an anesthetic during births, not epidurals, which are common in America. The use of ultrasounds in Iraq is extremely limited.

The Americans plan to leave behind some of the teaching tools so they can be used in future classes. They had mannequins, CD-ROMs and other teaching tools for the class.

They expect the Iraqi doctors to quickly catch up with what more than two decades of a dictatorship has cost them.