Tragically Little Help for Sick and Wounded Civilians in Baghdad

Capt. Yuri Rivera (with stethoscope) treats a man dying of renal failure while the man's daughter doodles in a notebook on the sofa. (Alex Kingsbury)

Capt. Yuri Rivera feels the tonsils of a young Iraqi. (Alex Kingsbury)

As Rivera and a squad of soldiers walk down the streets, the enormity of the medical crisis becomes more and more clear. Nearly all residents have an ailment for which they've not received treatment.

"Should my arm move like this?" asks a young man who shows Rivera how he can twist his entire elbow around at a very unnatural angle. Pulling up his shirt, he shows the soldiers where a bullet entered, then where the doctors tried to put his arm back together. "You need to do your exercises to strengthen that muscle," Rivera says.

"Why aren't you using the wheelchair we brought you?" one of the soldiers asks a man with severely damaged legs who is dragging himself across a dirt street. "They don't give me as much money," says the man, a beggar, who shuffles along only a few feet before reaching back to pick up his small cup and saucer of chai tea. Placing the cup and saucer a few feet ahead of him, the man again shifts his weight to his hands and begins to drag himself forward.

More shots ring out, sustained machine-gun fire this time, and the wooomph of an explosion. Later, the soldiers will learn this was a grenade and small-arms fire attack against Shiite pilgrims walking along a nearby highway. "More wounded," says Rivera, though he doesn't yet know that three pilgrims were just killed and 18 more injured.