Shortage of Cancer Drugs Impacts Iraqi Children with Leukemia
Thursday, July 24th, 2008A study led by Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center researchers revealed that some Iraqi children diagnosed with leukemia paid a steep price for economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations against the Iraqi government. The U.N.-ordered sanctions were imposed in 1990 after the invasion of Kuwait and remained in effect until 2003. During the sanctions, there was a widespread shortage of medications, including antibiotics and chemotherapeutic drugs.
“We wanted to determine if the reduction in the availability of chemotherapeutic agents resulted in actual changes in health outcomes for Iraqi children diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia,” said Haydar Frangoul, M.D., associate professor of Pediatrics and director of the Pediatric Stem Cell Transplant Program at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center.
Frangoul and colleagues from the Baghdad Medical College studied the medical records of 651 children diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) who were treated at the Children’s Welfare Teaching Hospital in Baghdad. Chemotherapy shortage was immediately observed after the implementation of the U.N. sanctions in 1990 but there was an incremental decrease in chemotherapy availability during the study period.
