The Iraqi Ministry of Health has raised the level of health alert after verifying 90 cases and 18 deaths from hemorrhagic fever, which has already spread to all provinces of the country since the appearance of the first case in November last year.
The so-called Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever has become a scourge for cattle farmers in the country. The virus, which has a mortality rate of 40%, spreads especially through cattle to the point that butchers are also at particular risk of infection.
The disease is raging with the population of the province of Dhi Qar, in the south of the country, where 42 people have already been infected despite the tightening of controls imposed by the Iraqi government a few weeks after the declaration of the outbreak.
“It is possible that the numbers will increase because there are other suspected cases,” warned the spokesman for the Iraqi Ministry of Health, Saif al Badr, in a statement collected by the Iraqi News portal and the Iraqi chain Al Ahad.