The Iranian village of Zardeh

[Simon King LCPH MARH]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/f ... espondent/
4341368.stm

Please email me privately, if anyone intends going out to try to help
with homeopathy, or knows anyone who is, I would like to support them
if possible e.g. donate money etc

The suffering of the children is too much

Simon

In July 1988, during the Iran-Iraq war, the Iranian village of Zardeh
was hit by Iraqi chemical bombs. Frances Harrison returns to the
village to see how local people are coping with the legacy.
Visiting the shrine, I found myself mobbed by survivors, desperate to
tell their story.

Old women in traditional Kurdish dress lifting up their skirts or
opening their blouses to show me scars and terrible burns all over
their bodies.

"Everyone knows the story of Halabja," they said, "but what about our
village, for God's sake do not forget us."

And yet forgotten is what they are.

I was told I was the first journalist, Iranian or foreign to visit
Zardeh after the initial aftermath of the bombing.

It took nine years before local doctors realised almost the entire
population of this village was suffering from the long-term effects
of exposure to mustard gas and nerve agent.

And that means 1,500 people ill in a population of 1,700, 70 cases of
cancer and a 30% miscarriage rate.

Nobody even knows the environmental damage caused or what the
consequences will be for future generations. This was, after all, the
first war in which nerve agent was used.
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