Hospitals in Iraq strain to manage soaring caseload
No beds, medical supplies running low and hospital wards prone to fire — Iraq’s doctors say they are losing the battle against the coronavirus. And they say that was true even before a devastating blaze killed dozens of people in a COVID19 isolation unit this week.
Infections in Iraq have surged to record highs in a third wave spurred by the more aggressive delta variant, and longneglected hospitals suffering the effects of decades of war are overwhelmed with severely ill patients, many of them young people.
Doctors are going online to plea for donations of medicine and bottled oxygen, and relatives are taking to social media to find hospital beds for stricken loved ones.
“Every morning, it’s the same chaos repeated, wards overwhelmed with patients,” said Dr. Sarmed Ahmed of Baghdad’s AlKindi Hospital.
Widespread distrust of Iraq’s crumbling health care system only intensified after Monday’s blaze at the AlHussein Teaching Hospital in the southern city of Nasiriyah, the country’s second catastrophic fire at a coronavirus ward in less than three months.
Days after the latest fire, the death toll was in dispute, with the Health Ministry putting it at 60, local health officials saying 88, and Iraq’s state news agency reporting 92 dead.
Many blame corruption and mismanagement in the medical system for the disaster, and Iraq’s premier ordered the arrest of key health officials.
Iraq recorded more than 9,600 new COVID19 cases Wednesday in the highest 24hour total since the pandemic began. Daily case numbers have been rising since May. Less than 3% of Iraq’s population has been vaccinated, a Health Ministry official told the Associated Press.