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Cases of cholera infection in Iraq near 1,000: Health Ministry

A patient suffering from cholera rests inside a hospital in Baghdad, Iraq, on September 21, 2015. (© Reuters)

Iraqi medical authorities say the number of recorded cases of cholera in the embattled Arab country now stands at approximately 1,000, though the waterborne disease has claimed no new lives in days.

Director General of Planning and Development at Iraq’s Health Ministry Hassan Hadi Baqer told the Arabic-language al-Sumaria satellite television network on Monday that 101 new cases have been diagnosed, bringing the number of people affected in the current cholera outbreak to 979.

Baqer added as many as 60 new people have contracted the disease in the central province of Babil, 17 in the city of Diwaniyah, located 130 kilometers (80 miles) south of the capital, Baghdad, 16 in Baghdad’s al-Rusafa district, which lies on the eastern side of the river Tigris, and eight in Karkh on the western sector of the river.

Cholera is an acute intestinal infection caused by ingestion of food or water contaminated with the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. It is a fast-developing infection that causes diarrhea, which can quickly lead to severe dehydration and death if treatment is not promptly provided.

Iraq’s water and sewerage systems are old while infrastructure development has been stalled by years of violence.

Iraqi medical staff work in a vehicle during a vaccination campaign against cholera at a makeshift camp housing displaced Iraqis, who fled the violence in the Iraqi city of Ramadi, on the southern outskirts of Baghdad, on September 21, 2015. (© AFP)

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has ordered a set of measures aimed at improving hygiene, among them daily water quality tests, distribution of bottled water to families internally displaced due to the conflict, and the installation of additional water purification stations.

Iraq’s Education Ministry has also delayed the opening of primary schools to October 18 “to give the Health Ministry the chance to complete precautionary measures in all schools.”

The latest registered cholera outbreak in Iraq killed four people and infected some 300 others in the northern city of Kirkuk, situated 236 kilometers (147 miles) north of Baghdad, and the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region in 2012. Five years before that, about 24 people died of the disease and over 4,000 cases were confirmed.

Iraq faces regular threats from other water-borne and food-borne diseases such as measles, typhoid fever, hepatitis, and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever due to poor public services and hygiene, according to the World Health Organization.


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