SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Health Minister Saman Barznji on Thursday said that they had tightened the measures as eight cases of deadly Crimean-Congo fever have been recorded.
“Several treatments are available for the disease, more importantly, is the anti-virus which is available and given to the patients who have been admitted to the intensive care unit,” the Minister told Esta Media Network.
“We are in communication with Baghdad to provide medicine, it had decided to send an amount, the rest necessary will be purchased by the KRG,” he said.
“We had 19 suspected cases of the Crimean-Congo fever, eight of them were confirmed positive and among them, four died by the disease,” he added.
Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever causes severe hemorrhaging. The fever has a fatality rate of between 10 and 40 percent in all cases.
The disease has been endemic to Iraq since 1979, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). At times, small outbreaks have been reported, with the last outbreak happening in 2022 summer.
Last Wednesday , Sulaimani authorities launched a cleaning and disinfection campaign to prevent the spread of the deadly Crimean-Congo fever disease.
Professional cleaning teams wearing protective masks inside the meat markets in the local Bazaar, sanitized the interior surfaces of the meat market, including the butcher shops as people usually catch the disease through contact with the blood of infected animals.
“The disease has not yet reached Sulaimani, and the sanitization campaign is only a protective measure to protect the people’s health,” said Rekan Jamal, the head of the health committee in the local government.
