WIBW - HomePage - Headlines  Health chiefs battle to bring back
Iraqi doctors    Doctors are just a tiny group among Iraq's more
than 4 million refugees and displaced, but Iraq's health
minister says their homecoming sends a message to other emigres
that security has "improved dramatically."  Still, the
nephrologist, who came back from Britain in July, remains
cautious. He mostly sleeps at his workplace, Baghdad's Surgical
Hospital, because he fears being attacked en route to his
hometown, an insurgent stronghold north of Baghdad. He refused
to give his name for publication because he still fears being
targeted.  For every doctor who comes back, nine stay away.
Some 8,000 physicians, most of them specialists, have abandoned
jobs at government health centers since the U.S.-led invasion in
2003, most seeking refuge abroad and a few hundred heading to
the relative safety of Iraq's Kurdish region. Many ran from a
violent campaign by extremists and crime gangs that targeted
Iraq's elite.  Their departure has furt