Sadr City is a suburb of 30 square km situated in the northwest of Baghdad. It was built in the late 1950s, in response to grave housing shortages in the city. The goal was to provide accommodation for Baghdad's urban poor, many of whom had come from the countryside for work and who were living in appalling conditions. Almost 60 years later, Sadr City is an overcrowded neighborhood that is home to some 3.5 million Iraqis. There are just four hospitals to serve this population – one of them is called the Imam Ali hospital and is managed by the Ministry of Health.

An MSF team first visited the Imam Ali hospital in 2017. Then, throughout the course of 2018 and 2019, the team supported Iraqi doctors to improve the Emergency Care System of this hospital. Murtadha is one of the MSF staff working there as a crowd controller. Month after month, Murtadha’s role has proved essential. Across MSF projects around the world, crowd controllers like him are key: they make sure that patients feel at ease when they go to the hospital for treatment.