Committee Aids War Victims

A local organization of physicians against nuclear war has set up a committee to coordinate relief efforts for civilian victims of the Persian Gulf war.

More than a dozen students and faculty members from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) have volunteered their services to the newly-formed Medical Coordinating Committee on Victims of the Gulf War, established by the Cambridge-based group International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW).

The committee is a joint effort of IPPNW and the American affiliate of Medecins du Monde (Doctors of the World), the French humanitarian relief organization, said Peter A. Zheutlin, a committee spokesperson.

The chair of the committee and co-president of IPPNW, Bernard Lown, is also professor of cardiology in nutrition at HSPH. Another HSPH professor, Jonathan M.Mann '69, is president of the American affiliate of Medecins du Monde and the coordinator of the HSPH volunteers.

Although the committee volunteers will not provide direct medical relief to war victims, they will provide relief indirectly--by publicizing the "human cost" of the war and enlisting the aid of other relief organizations, said Zheutlin.

"The mission [of the committee] is to paint a human dimension of the Gulf War and gather and disseminate information of health problems created by the war," said Zheutlin.

"There is an urgent need for world leaders and the general public to understand the full scope of the human tragedy unfolding in the Gulf," said Lown in a prepared statement.

In addition, the committee will "want to make sure that international [relief] agencies and governments involved attend to the problems," said Zheutlin.

"[We will] assist international organizations such as the Red Cross to do their work, to make their work possible" through the coordination efforts of the committee, he said.

Committee members will take requests for relief for those affected by the war and then contact the appropriate authorities to provide the proper medical assistance, said Zheutlin.

Those whom the committee considers "victims" include Iraqi civilians and prisoners of war in addition to Americans and citizens of other coalition countries, Zheutlin said.

"The point is this is a humanitarian point of view. We are concerned with all the innocent victims of the war. We are also concerned with the human toll of the war," he said.

IPPNW is a non-profit organization with 250,000 members in 70 countries, Zheutlin said. The organization received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985.