Russian Doctors Ready to Leave for Iraq to Help Children - 26 March, 2003

A group of Russian doctors are ready to leave for Iraq to render medical assistance to the Iraqi children who have suffered in the military action. The decision was announced by well-known paediatrician, chairman of the International Committee for Pediatric Disasters of the World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine, Professor Leonid Roshal.

Roshal helped the hostages in the Dubrovka Theatre Centre, Moscow, taken by Chechen terrorists in October last year.

The Russian Red Cross and paediatricians sent a letter to the International Red Cross Committee, announcing their willingness to leave for Iraq to help the children. "Yet so far they have not received any answer," he said.

Russian paediatricians and the Russian Red Cross proposed to the world community to set up a so-called green corridor in order to take injured and wounded children out of the military zone. The International Red Cross, however, has assumed a wait-and-see attitude on the issue, the professor pointed out.