The conservative “Coalition of the Builders of an Islamic Iran” is expected to take the parliament, known as Majlis.Most voters who turned out appeared to be diehard conservatives or religious people who had been told it was their duty to vote. State television played patriotic songs and showed footage of mass participation in previous elections.The President, Mohammad Khatami, had labelled the elections “unfair”. We try to do everything ourselves,” says Dr Raaby.”We are waiting for the Americans to do what they said they would,” she says “They made so many promises, such a long list We are waiting for them to keep those promises.”. Turnout in Iran’s parliamentary elections appeared to be low yesterday, despite a pronounced effort by conservatives to mobilise the vote.

The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called on voters to deliver a “slap in the face to America” by turning out in strong numbers. “Those who whisper ‘don’t vote’ are traitors to the country and Islam,” said Ahmad Jannati, head of the Guardian Council, which banned 2,300 reformist candidates from running. The ward is so short of nurses that Dr Raaby and the other doctors have been teaching the mothers to carry out basic tasks But teaching them the importance of hygiene is hard “We cannot trust them. “But it turned out it was all being done by the Shia clerics who’d come back from exile, not the coalition,” she says.Back at Al-Iskan, laundry is drying on a line in the premature babies’ ward. It is hard to overstate the bitter disappointment Haitians feel about the way things have turned out. In 1990, Aristide seemed a providential, almost messianic figure in a country subjected to almost unceasing political violence and external meddling – notably from the United States — over its 200-year-old history.

Local clinics are not supplied with specialised drugs used to treat complications in childbirth. The occupation authorities inherited this problem from the Saddam regime, which spent very little on women’s health. But Dr Amowitz says the Americans have no plan to improve the situation.”The problem is that there is no effort on the part of the coalition provisional authority to think about a long-term public health policy,” she says. “The sort of people who have the expertise in this, the NGOs, the US Agency for International Development, have not been involved in Iraq. The US Department of Defence decided they’re going to do everything and, well, they’re not used to building things.” As far as hospitals are concerned, Dr Amowitz says she did see a lot of improvements in some local hospitals in the south.

“But the health care for people who don’t need to be hospitalised is even worse.” Dr Amowitz singles out the lack of facilities for pregnant women. A report by Physicians for Human Rights from southern Iraq found that at local maternity clinics, caesarean sections were being performed with unsterilised scalpels, needles were being reused, and staff did not even have clean water to wash the mother before she gave birth.”In the hospitals, you’re seeing the sickest 20 per cent of the populations,” says Dr Lynn Amowitz, of Physicians for Human Rights. well, it’s not like other places,” says Dr Raaby.Sometimes the babies get these infections inside the ward because of the poor sanitation, says the doctor, sometimes they get it from unhygienic conditions at home, or home deliveries by unqualified midwives, who cut the umbilical cord with unsterilised instruments.Outside the hospitals conditions are even more dire. Dr Raaby stands over 21-day-old Hussein Hadi, who has developed septicaemia, an infection of the blood. “We are trying to do what we can with the facilities we have, but the situation …