By Kathy Kelly

Published in the Jordan Times, April 13, 2000

It feels oddly like being at a wake in a funeral home. Our delegation members whisper together as we wait to tour the Al Mansour Children’s wing at the Saddam City Medical Center. The Director is away, so someone has been sent to find a senior doctor to brief us. As I flip open my diary, it dawns on me that at this time four years ago, March 1996, the first Voices in the Wilderness delegation visited Iraq. 30 delegations later not much has changed within this hospital. What must the doctors and nurses think as one delegation after another hears the litany of shortages and views the dying the children?