Number of infections, deaths from hemorrhagic fever rise in Iraq: Health Ministry

Iraq's Ministry of Health announced on Sunday that the number of hemorrhagic fever cases increase throughout Iraq.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Health, Saif al-Badr, said in a statement that the statistic of hemorrhagic fever since the beginning of 2022 has reached 194, including 32 deaths.

The Ministry of Agriculture identified, earlier, 4 factors that contributed to the high incidence of hemorrhagic fever in Iraq, while showing mechanisms for combating animal diseases and pests.

Another spokesman for the Ministry, Hamid al-Nayef, said in a press statement that the lack of veterinary staff, the random butcheries within the cities, the lack of attention to how clean the animal barns are, as well as reduction in the official working hours which was within the procedures to confront the Coronavirus.

He pointed out that the ministry has contact with all animal breeders, and has mobile teams throughout Iraq to combat diseases and prevent them from reaching humans.

The Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic fever, also known as Congo fever, is tick-borne and causes severe hemorrhaging. 

People are often infected after they come into contact with the blood of infected animals, often after slaughtering livestock. The symptoms of the disease in its first stage include high temperature, lethargy, and various pains in the body and abdomen in particular.

Congo fever has been endemic to Iraq since 1979, according to World Health Organization (WHO). It can be transmitted from one infected human to another by contact with infectious blood or body fluids.

The disease existed in Iraq with only 20 cases or less in a year, but this year, the country has recorded over 100 cases so far, prompting authorities to take measures to control the disease spread.

Kirkuk recorded the first case of hemorrhagic fever death on May 7

Regarding Monkeypox which is currently spread in Europe, Nayef stressed that “the disease has not entered Iraq so far."



PUKmedia