Inside a small barn in a remote village in southern Iraq, a medical team begins to sterilize a cow and its young with insecticides, in a scene that has become a daily diary on Iraq’s farms, due to an unprecedented rise in infections of the Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever that overshadowed the Covid-19 epidemic.
The numbers speak for themselves. Since January, the country has recorded 111 cases of the disease in humans, including 19 deaths, according to the World Health Organization.
In previous years, “the number of cases recorded did not exceed the fingers of one hand annually,” according to the director of the Disease Control Division within the Health Department in the southern province of Dhi Qar, Haidar Hantoush.
This poor and rural governorate alone recorded half of the total cases of hemorrhagic fever in Iraq. Livestock breeding, including buffalo, cows, goats and sheep, is widespread in this region, which are the intermediate animals in transmitting Crimean-Congo fever to humans.
In the village of Albu Jari in Dhi Qar, a team from the Department of Health disinfects a house in which a woman has contracted the disease. The team members, who wore a white robe, put on masks and goggles for protection. Under a tin roof, they sprayed a cow and its two cubs with disinfectant to kill the insects that transmit the virus.
The team then goes to sterilize buckets and iron basins placed in the barn, then dirt and gravel in the surrounding garden.
After the team has completed the sterilization task, one of its members carries a plastic container with tiny brown insects that have been removed from the animals.
According to the World Health Organization, the transmission of Crimean-Congo fever to humans occurs either through tick bites or by contact with the blood or tissues of infected animals during or immediately after slaughter.
Unprecedented
The virus was discovered for the first time in 1979 in Iraq, and it causes death rates ranging between 10 to 40 percent of infections. According to the World Health Organization, “the virus is transmitted from one person to another as a result of direct contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other body fluids of the infected person.”
In the year 2021, Dhi Qar governorate recorded 16 injuries, including 7 deaths, while this year the governorate recorded 43 injuries, including 8 deaths. Most of the injured are livestock keepers and butchers, according to the authorities.
The representative of the World Health Organization, Ahmed Zouiten, attributes this rise in the number of injuries to several “hypotheses”.
He refers to the absence of sterilization campaigns conducted by the authorities for animals during 2020 and 2021, due to the closure related to the Corona virus. As a result, “the numbers of insects grew.”
The expert explains that this year’s “insect breeding” began early, “about two or three weeks earlier” than usual. The rise is “very cautiously, in part, due to the climatic warming, which has caused an extension of the reproductive period of insects.”
For his part, the clinical hematologist in the Dhi Qar Health Department, Azhar Al-Asadi, says that the infections have increased due to “the lack of awareness among people about the ways of transmission of this disease and the failure to take the matter seriously, especially regarding the instructions provided by doctors.”
He pointed out that the “spread of homeless animals” is also a “dangerous issue”, especially recommending the butchers to “slaughter the animals” in their private places and “clean them”.
The doctor says that the majority of patients are in the “young stage, average age is about 33 years”, although injuries were recorded in a 12-year-old child and a 75-year-old man.
In more advanced cases of the disease, the patient suffers from bleeding from the mouth, nose, under the skin, and in the digestive and urinary systems, the doctor explains.
He points to fears of “a high number of injuries during the Eid al-Adha period due to the high rate of slaughter” of animals and the proximity of meat.
Fear of red meat
This virus is not limited to Iraq, as it has also recorded infections for years in the Balkans, as well as in Sudan, Namibia, Iran and Turkey, and witnessed a remarkable increase in Afghanistan in the year 2018 with 483 infections, and in 2019 with 583 infections, and in the year 2020, it recorded 184 infections, including 15 death, according to the World Health Organization.
Iraq, along with the United Nations, has recently intensified its sterilization and awareness-raising campaigns among the population. And hospitals have introduced a new antiviral treatment that “began to give good results,” according to Zouiten, who adds, “It seems that the death rate has decreased.”
Near the city of Najaf in southern Iraq, the health authorities monitor the hygiene procedures adopted by the slaughterhouses, while the consumption of red meat in the province has decreased by 50 percent.
“We used to slaughter between 15 and 16 animals a day, but now we slaughter between 7 and 8,” said Qasab Hamid Mohsen.
The director of the veterinary hospital in Najaf, Faris Mansour, acknowledges that there has been a decrease in the rate of consumption.
He stresses that “sanitary and veterinary measures are continuing in a very intensive way,” calling on residents to buy meat only from “stores that conform to health specifications.”
“People are starting to fear red meat and think that red meat will transmit infection,” he says, adding, “We noticed that the number of meat we receive daily decreased by 50 percent.”