The new umbrella group, the NGOs Coordination Committee in Iraq (NCCI), will establish a work-for-food program to encourage staff to return to the capital's hospitals, many of which were crippled by the US-led invasion and subsequent looting.

"Iraq only had a handful of NGOs before the war. Now the border's open there will probably be 50 or 60," said Philippe Schneider of the French NGO Premiere Urgence which initiated the NCCI.

"If we don't cooperate between ourselves we'll overlap, and end up favoring one part of the people and not getting enough help to other people," said Schneider, whose group has provided infrastructural support for Iraqi hospitals since 1997.

NGOs that have so far signed up include Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres), Life for Relief and Development, the Islamic Relief Agency, Intersos and Un Pont Fer.

More NGOs, both medical and non-medical, have been invited to join at a meeting set for Thursday, Schneider said.

Schneider said the committee would try an innovative approach to getting Baghdad's hospital staff back to work: paying them food.

"The medical staff are returning little by little. But there are non-medical staff and even some nurses who haven't come back to work," he said.

"It's a salary problem. The infrastructure of the health ministry is gone. We don't even know where they are. The doctors have some money. They're not rich, but they can afford to come in, but the others can't," he said.

Hospitals in the capital have been closed due to damage fron the war and a subsequent lack of electricity and water. Many were partially or completely looted in the frenzy that followed the fall of Saddam Hussein' regime April 9.

SPACE.WIRE