I was born in Iraq, received my medical degree in the United States, and taught medicine for nine years at the University of Baghdad. After the trials and tribulations that marked the rise of the Ba'ath Party, I had to leave the country, but I still have my friends and family in Baghdad.

I visited Iraq periodically until about 1979. There was a relative openness then to people who were not members of the party so I was invited to give lectures and participate in various professional conferences. Since Saddam took over completely as president, I have been invited a number of times but choose not to attend.

I am not a member of any political party. I am independent. I think that most of the people in our public health working group are independent. My medical specialty is cardiology.

I was very glad that these groups have been initiated. I think it was an important step but I hope there will be many other steps after this. I hope that we can return to a very hopeful outlook. Iraq is blessed with abundant resources, a cradle of many civilizations. It was very gratifying in the early 1970s to see that the health field was progressing so rapidly. Our medical graduates were excellent and we offered our own post-graduate training.

With the politicization of everything by the current regime, you have a totally different picture. Medical students were no longer selected on ability. Higher-grade staff appeared to be in place to write reports on others. People began to disappear — this is the legacy of the regime.

I think that public health education and public health research-with an emphasis on handling the endemic health problems in Iraq such as bilharzias, tuberculosis, and maternal-child care, including immunizations — should probably be strengthened.

When I was in Iraq, we did a study of the admissions and we were astounded to find over half the admissions were related to cardiovascular problems, many of which were tied to rheumatic fever and diabetes.

I have no doubt that the health care system has deteriorated in recent years. What happened is this: more and more money was spent on armaments and wars so there was much less money to spend on the health sector. Then you had excellent people on the faculties who were dismissed because of their political "infidelities" to the regime. And then you had decisions made for political judgments, not because of medical advantages.

The effects of sanctions were certainly devastating for the people and they were not successful in loosening the regime's grip on government.

But we have to hope. I believe that, like all terrible situations that are abnormal, anomalous, they are not going to last. But I hope that we will learn the lessons, so that the situation will not reoccur.