A virulent form of hepatitis that is especially lethal for pregnant women has broken out in two of Iraq's most troubled districts, Iraqi Health Ministry officials said in interviews this week.
They warned that a collapse of water and sewage systems during the continuing violence in the country is at the root of the outbreak.
The disease, called hepatitis E, is caused by a virus that is often spread by sewage-contaminated drinking water. The officials said that they had equipment to test only a limited number of people showing symptoms, suggesting that only a fraction of the actual cases has been firmly diagnosed.
In Sadr City, a Baghdad slum that for months has been convulsed by battles between a local militia and US troops, officials said up to 155 cases had turned up.
The second outbreak is in Mahmudiya, a town 35 miles south of Baghdad that is known as much for its kidnappings and drive-by shootings as for its poverty, where there are an estimated 60 cases. At least nine pregnant women are believed to have been infected, and one has died. Five deaths have been reported.
"We are saying that the real number is greatly more than this, because the area is greatly underreported," said Dr Atta-alla Mekhlif Al-Salmani of the viral hepatitis section at the Health Ministry's Center of Disease Control.
The WHO is rushing hepatitis E testing kits, water purification tablets, informational brochures and other materials to Iraq, said Dr Naeema Al-Gasseer, the WHO representative for Iraq, who is now based in Amman, Jordan.
But viral hepatitis comes in many forms, and another ominous set of statistics suggests that the quality of water supplies around the country has deteriorated since the US-led war began last year.
In 2003, 70 percent more cases of hepatitis of all types were reported across Iraq than in the year before, he said. During the first six months of 2004, as many cases were reported as in all of 2002.
In another indication of the deteriorating safety of water and food, the number of reported cases of typhoid fever is up sharply this year, said Dr Nima Abid, the ministry's director general of public health and primary health. Hospitals across the country are also full of children with severe forms of diarrhea, Abid said.
These reports come as the US administration has proposed shifting US$3.46 billion in reconstruction money for Iraq to programs that would train and equip tens of thousands of additional police officers, border guards and national guardsmen. The shift, which needs approval by Congress, would gut what had been a program to rebuild Iraq's water and sewage systems.
Last fall, Congress approved US$18.4 billion for Iraq's reconstruction. So far, only about $1 billion of that has been spent.
"The problem is the whole infrastructure," Abid said of the mounting health problems. "Definitely no major intervention has been done in this last one and a half years to repair the problem."
SPEAKING OUT: After Siranudh Scott’s allegations surfaced, celebrities and public figures took to social media to share their own experiences of sexual misconduct and abuse A high-profile alleged sexual abuse case within a wealthy Thai beer brewing family has prompted a wave of painful accounts from survivors of unconnected abuse in the conservative nation. Siranudh Scott, a member of the billionaire Thai family that founded the ubiquitous Singha beer brand, posted an emotional video this month accusing his elder brother Sunit of repeatedly abusing him when he was a teenager. Sunit, who is in his 30s, later denied the allegations in a video posted online, but Singha parent Boonrawd dismissed him from his executive role with the company on Tuesday last week. “I felt I needed to speak
A Hong Kong astronaut is to join a Chinese space mission for the first time as part of a three-person crew launching today, as Beijing edges closer to its goal of landing people on the moon. The Tiangong space station — crewed by teams of three astronauts that are typically rotated every six months — is the crown jewel of China’s space program, boosted by billions in state investment in a bid to catch up with the US and Russia. The Shenzhou-23 mission is to blast off at 11:08pm from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China, carrying three astronauts to
UPGRADED ALERT: The risk inside DR Congo is now considered ‘very high,’ while neighboring countries face a ‘high’ threat as the outbreak continues, the WHO said Ebola is spreading faster than responders can track it in eastern Congo, where health workers managed to follow up with barely one in five identified contacts in a single day. Authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) reported 83 confirmed infections, 746 suspected cases and 1,603 identified contacts as of Thursday, but health workers were able to follow up on only 342 contacts that day — about 21 percent of the total under monitoring — data released by the DR Congo Ministry of Public Health on Friday showed. The figures suggest the response is falling behind the outbreak itself,
SEEKING ORDER: Rodrigo Paz said that ‘anyone who wants to destroy the nation will have to deal with this president and the full force of the constitution’ Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz on Wednesday said that the nation was at a “breaking point” after nearly a month of protests that have caused shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Paz, who took office six months ago amid the worst economic crisis there in four decades, is battling a groundswell of fury over his policies. The political capital, La Paz, has been besieged by low-income workers and members of the indigenous majority calling for his resignation. “The country needs order and is reaching breaking point,” the 58-year-old said at a public event in La Paz, renewing his appeal for dialogue. On Tuesday, the Bolivian
RSS