In Iraq, like anywhere, it's hard to find good morgue workers
There was blood on the white tile floor, on the eight metal gurneys and on the hands of the worker using coarse black thread to sew up an autopsy incision on the latest body to arrive at the moldering central morgue.
A sour smell of blood filled the air as the man worked, a black apron draped across his blue scrubs, rubber boots shielding his feet. The woman had died of natural causes, he said. A doctor sent the body here for an autopsy just in case the death proved suspicious. (It didn't.)
Outside, four more corpses awaited autopsies: two splayed naked on gurneys, a third in a black body bag on the ground, and a fourth wrapped in a fuzzy flowered blanket with a trail of bloodstains from a bullet wound to the neck. More bagged bodies were piled nearby in a makeshift freezer.
Ten doctors and eight additional staff members are assigned to the central morgue. But that's barely enough, employees said, even though the workload is much lighter than during the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the height of Iraqi sectarian warfare four years later.
"The problem is not so much a shortage of doctors. It's a shortage of people willing to do the work," said the morgue worker, an Egyptian immigrant who asked to be identified only as Dr. Adil. "People don't really have the courage for it."
As in much of the world, there is only a small segment of the population willing to work with the dead. And there is also the risk of disease and, in Iraq, the danger of upsetting families who prefer Muslim Iraqi doctors, now in short supply.
Adil said he handles about five cases a day, half the daily total. That is a relatively light load, less than a tenth of the daily total in 2007. But the small staff is still strapped, forced to work quickly with little attention to detail, he said.
Adil has labored here for 18 years but, like many foreign staffers, does not have a full-time contract. Whereas doctors are paid $4,000 a month, he and other immigrant employees get about $210. They are deemed temporary workers, regardless of their length of service.
Temporary staff members can be appointed as permanent employees, he said. "We're hoping with the budget now they'll be appointing more," he said, as another worker wheeled in the body in the flowered blanket, probably a victim of sectarian violence.
Dr. Taha Qasim, head of administration for forensic medicine at the morgue, said the facility has been called upon to do more with fewer staff members, leading to delays.
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In Iraq, like anywhere, it's hard to find good morgue workers