Pomeps Conversations

Omar Dewachi talks about his latest book, Ungovernable Life: Mandatory Medicine and Statecraft in Iraq, with Marc Lynch on this week’s podcast. The book presents the history of healthcare in Iraq, the rise and fall of Iraqi medicine, and the role of healthcare in the making and unmaking of the infrastructure of the state. Dewachi explains, “For four decades the state [of Iraq] invested in training doctors and building better health care institutions. Regardless of the ideology of the ruling parties…there was constant interest in developing the health care infrastructure.” He expands, “The war platform was very important in the 1980s and actually both Iraq and Iran showed…a lot of investment and mobilization of the population to respond to the possible health fallout from the war. So in both countries actually you see cutting down of infant mortality rates, maternal mortality rates, and the mobilization of the population to actually do public health on a grassroots level.” “What you get in the 1990s [is] a