In a small warehouse in a remote village in southern Iraq, a medical team begins sterilizing a cow and her cubs with insecticides, a scene that has become a diary on Iraqi farms due to the unprecedented rise in Crimean infections. Congo hemorrhagic fever that overshadowed the Covid-19 epidemic.
The numbers speak for themselves. Since January, the country has registered 111 cases of the disease in humans, including 19 deaths, according to the World Health Organization.
According to Haidar Hantoush, director of the disease control department at the health department in the southern province of Dhi Qar, in recent years, “the number of cases registered annually has not exceeded the fingers of one hand.”
This poor and rural governorate alone has recorded half of all cases of hemorrhagic fever in Iraq. Animal husbandry, including buffaloes, cattle, goats and sheep, is common in the region, which is a mediator in the transmission of Crimean Congo fever to humans.
In the village of al-Bujari in Dhi Qar, a team from the Ministry of Health disinfects a house where a woman has contracted the disease. Team members wearing white robes used masks and goggles to protect themselves. Under a tin roof, they sprayed a cow and her two cubs with disinfectant to kill the virus-carrying insects.
The team then sterilizes the iron buckets and basins placed in the warehouse and then the soil and sand in the surrounding garden.
After the team completes the sterilization work, one of its members carries a plastic container with tiny brown insects that have been isolated from the animals.
According to the World Health Organization, Crimean Congo fever is transmitted to humans either through bites or through contact with the blood or tissue of infected animals during or immediately after slaughter.
The virus was first discovered in Iraq in 1979 and causes between 10 and 40 percent of all infections. According to the World Health Organization, “the virus is transmitted from person to person through direct contact with the infected person’s blood, secretions, organs or other body fluids.”
In 2021, Dhi Qar province recorded 16 injured including 7 killed and this year 43 injured including 8 killed have been registered in the province. According to officials, most of the injured are ranchers and butchers.
Ahmed Zweiten, a spokesman for the World Health Organization, said the increase was due to several “hypotheses”.
He points out that the authorities did not carry out sterilization campaigns for animals during 2020 and 2021 due to the closure of the Corona virus. As a result, “the number of insects increased.”
This year, the “insect breeding” started earlier and “about two or three weeks earlier” than usual, the expert explains. The increase is “very cautious, in part because of the warming climate, which has prolonged the insect breeding season.”
Azhar al-Asadi, a clinical hematologist at the Dhi Qar Health Department, says infections have increased due to “people not being aware of the ways the disease is transmitted and not taking it seriously.” “Especially about doctors’ orders.”
Noting that the “spread of stray animals” is also a “dangerous issue”, he specifically advised butchers to “slaughter animals” in private places and “clean them up”.
The doctor says most patients are in the “youth phase, the average age is about 33”, although injuries have been reported in a 12-year-old child and a 75-year-old man.
The doctor explains that in more advanced cases, the patient experiences bleeding from the mouth, nose, subcutaneous tissue, and gastrointestinal tract and urine.
He cites fears of “a large number of injuries during Eid al-Adha due to the high rate of slaughter” of animals and the proximity of meat.
The virus is not limited to Iraq, as it has been reported in the Balkans for years, as well as in Sudan, Namibia, Iran and Turkey, and increased by 483 cases in Afghanistan in 2018 and a significant increase in 2019. With 583 cases, in 2020, 184 cases, including 15 deaths, were recorded, according to the World Health Organization.
Iraq, along with the United Nations, has recently stepped up its sterilization and public awareness campaigns. And hospitals have introduced a new antiviral treatment that “started to work well,” Zwaiten said, adding that “mortality appears to have dropped.”
Near the southern Iraqi city of Najaf, health officials are monitoring the hygiene practices adopted by slaughterhouses, while red meat consumption in the province has dropped by 50 percent.
Butcher Hamid Mohsen said: “We used to slaughter between 15 and 16 heads a day, but now we slaughter between 7 and 8 heads.”
The head of the Najaf Fars Veterinary Hospital, Mansour, acknowledged that consumption had decreased.
Emphasizing that “health and veterinary measures continue in a very intensive manner,” he urged residents to buy meat only from “stores that meet health standards.”
“People have started to fear red meat and think that red meat transmits the infection,” he said.
Source: Lebanon Debate
