Dhi Qar Governorate, southern Iraq, on Monday recorded a death from hemorrhagic fever, raising the number of deaths from this disease to nine across the country.
The Director of Public Health in Dhi Qar, in southern Iraq, Dr. Hussein Riyad, announced that “a 35-year-old man died of hemorrhagic fever.”
“The number of deaths rose to six, including a woman, and 28 cases of this disease, in Dhi Qar,” he added.
40 injuries
And the spokesman for the Iraqi Ministry of Health, Saif Al-Badr, announced at the end of last week that Iraq had recorded 40 cases of the viral disease, also known as Congo fever, since the beginning of the year, most of them in the south.
However, Al-Badr explained to AFP that the country is not witnessing an outbreak, saying, “So far, the injuries are limited. Every year we record injuries and deaths, they were and still are limited.”
But he added, “On average, this year is higher than last year, so we have intensified prevention measures.”
“He was practicing indiscriminate slaughter”
It is noteworthy that the last death in Iraq belongs to Friday, a person who worked as a butcher, “who was practicing indiscriminate slaughter,” according to the local authorities.
While the total number of deaths throughout Iraq reached nine.
The victims of this disease were distributed in the governorates of Maysan, Karbala, Muthanna, Babil and Nineveh, according to a statistic announced by the Ministry of Health. More than half of the injuries were recorded in Dhi Qar Governorate, a poor governorate where livestock is raised in many areas.
The virus has also spread in recent days in northern governorates.
Who are most at risk of contracting this disease?
Livestock farmers and butchers workers are most at risk of contracting the disease, according to the Iraqi Ministry of Health.
Breeders of cows, sheep, goats and buffaloes are also at risk, as these animals are considered a vector for hemorrhagic fever.
There is no vaccine for this disease in humans or animals, and its primary symptoms are fever, muscle pain and abdominal pain, but when it develops, it leads to bleeding from the eyes, ears and nose, leading to failure in the body’s organs, which leads to death, according to the Iraqi Ministry of Health.
Infection with the hemorrhagic fever virus also leads to death at a rate ranging between 10 to 40 percent of those infected.