This program at the UW Social Work school should be of interest to anyone
concerned about health conditions in Iraq. Please join us this Friday
night for a discussion with our Iraqi colleague - via webcast from
Vancouver, as he has been denied a visa to come to the US to speak.

Mary Anne

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2007 22:45:43 -0700
From: Amy Hagopian <hagopian@...>
To: IHP program list serve <ihp@...>
Subject: [Ihp] Fwd: Iraqi physician/health researcher will FINALLY address UW
audience

IHP friends,
I am in Vancouver meeting with Dr. Lafta this week about the data he
collected on cancer rates among children in Iraq. He is the most
amazing and wonderful man, and I strongly encourage you to come to
his talk on Friday and bring your friends. You won't be sorry.
Details below.

Amy Hagopian


Please circulate broadly, post if possible. Public is invited.
Admission is free, street parking available

Dr. Riyadh Lafta
Al Mustansiriya University, Baghdad Iraq
"Death in Iraq"
Friday, July 20, 2007, 7:00 pm

Live interactive Webcast in Seattle:
UW School of Social Work, Room 305, 4101 15th Ave NE (map)

In Person:
Wosk Center for Dialogue, 518 W. Hastings St. Vancouver BC, CANADA (map)


In October of 2006, the University of Washington invited Dr. Riyadh
Lafta, an Iraqi physician, epidemiologist and health services planner
to come to the UW to conclude a Gates-funded research project to
document a suspected increase in childhood cancers in Southern Iraq.
Dr. Lafta had been working with Dr. Amy Hagopian (Health Services)
and her research team to access data from hospitals and physicians in
Iraq--both in Baghdad and Basra, as the security situation in Iraq
made it unsafe for any American researchers to do so. After many
months of waiting, it became clear that the US State Dept. would not
issue a visa to Dr. Lafta, although no official explanation was ever
given. Dr. Lafta was, perhaps not coincidentally, one of the authors
of two peer reviewed journal articles published in the British
medical journal, The Lancet, that counted the number of Iraqi
civilian deaths since the US-led invasion in March 2003.

One of the researchers involved in the cancer assessment is Tim
Takaro, a former UW Environmental Health faculty member currently on
the Health Sciences faculty at Simon Fraser University. Dr. Takaro
invited Dr. Lafta to come to Vancouver and the Canadian government
quickly issued him a visa. In April, he was to address a live
audience at Simon Fraser, and we arranged to web-cast his talk to an
audience in Kane Hall. Dr. Lafta never made the trip, because he was
denied a transit visa for a 3 hour layover at London's Heathrow
airport en route from the Middle East to Canada. At the last minute,
Dr. Les Roberts, an American author of the two Lancet studies and
lecturer at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia
University, came to Seattle to substitute for Dr. Lafta. Dr. Roberts
addressed an audience of more than 200 university and community
members in Kane Hall and his talk was broadcast to an audience in
Vancouver.

Since April, an airline began servicing a route that could fly Dr.
Lafta directly from Jordan to Canada. Dr. Lafta will make a second
attempt to give his talk to both a Vancouver and Seattle audience. He
will speak live from the Wosk Center for Dialogue at Simon Fraser
University and via two-way interactive video to an audience in
Seattle. The Seattle talk will take place in Room 305 of the UW
School of Social Work Building, 4101 15th Ave NE, at 7:00 pm on July
20th, next Friday.

Dr. Lafta is one of Iraq's most experienced health researchers, and
one in a million who to this day is willing to work together on an
American-led research project. His experience with the Iraqi health
system and the health of the Iraqi population spans the period from
the First Gulf War, though the UN sanction period (where he estimated
child mortality resulting from the sanctions for the UN) to the
present. He is currently on the faculty at Al Mustansiriya Medical
School in Baghdad and involved in numerous research activities.

We are very pleased to welcome Dr. Lafta (virtually) to the
University of Washington, and invite our colleagues and friends to
join us on Friday July 20th, at 7:00 pm, in the large hall of the UW
School of Social Work (address and map, above. flyer and news release
attached).

Sincerely,

On behalf of the UW-Iraq Sister University Project
Ian Maki, MPH