I visited the main paediatric hospital in Basrah. The doctor brought me around the overcrowded wards in which up to three mothers and their babies shared the same bed. We visited each mother and children to hear their story. Eventually we came to a very ill baby, attached to a drip. He was seven month old Mohammed, the first child of his 20-year-old mother Nabila. He weighted 3.5 kg, less than half his target weight. He was also suffering from pneumonia and diarrhoea. The doctor told me there was nothing further he could do. I sat with Nabila and we watched her beautiful son die. I raged at the waste of his life, while she, in a dignified way, appeared to accept his death as inevitable. News of Mohammed's death spread quickly. Many of the other mothers came to her bedside. Again, the unnatural acceptance of this baby's death. One of them asked me, the foreigner, "How many more of our children have to die?"