“I feel blessed to be working on this important project”

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineer’s new hospital in Iraq is projected to cut infant mortality rates in half.

The hospital is designed to reduce child mortality by half within five years of its opening in southern Iraq – “a goal that will affect over one million children,” said Ryan Hartwig, construction representative with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Basrah Children’s Hospital Office.

The hospital will primarily be a referral center with a special focus on pediatric cancer, providing state-of-the-art specialty services never before available in Iraq.

Components of the project includes a 160,000 sq. ft. two-story, 94-bed children’s hospital building, mechanical and electrical plants, a 38-bed dormitory, medical waste treatment system, oxygen generation plant, warehouse, back-up generators, roads/parking and landscaping.

“We’re truly doing good things over here and changing people’s lives,” Hartwig said. “What you don’t see on TV are the positive projects we’re completing and turning over to the Iraqi government — new water treatment facilities, road paving, sewer lines, primary healthcare centers, substations, and schools,” he added.

Hartwig added:

“I feel blessed to be working on this important project,” said Ryan Hartwig, construction representative with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Basrah Children’s Hospital Office

“Each time we go, we see more progress. I can look at the place now and actually visualize patients using this facility,” he continued. “It’s just very satisfying being part of this effort that will no doubt save or change the lives of so many Iraqi children.”

I really wish stories like this would get the kind of attention that Barack Obama gets for working out at the Ritz in Germany.