NewsDesk @bactiman63

The Public Health Department in Dhi Qar, southern Iraq, announced Sunday the registration of new cases of hemorrhagic fever (Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever), according to a Shafaq News report.

Image/ErikaWittlieb via pixabay

The department official, Hussein Riyad, said that “medical tests confirmed the infection of 3 new persons with hemorrhagic fever, out of 5 tests sent to public laboratories.”

Riyad indicated that “some of the infected patients work as shepherds, and one patient is a neighbor of a butcher,” noting that “the total number of cases reached 14, of whom 3 died.”

Riyadh stressed that “the department is facing difficulty in working on controlling this disease because the supporting government agencies are not working well with his department.”

In early April 2022, the Public Health Department in Dhi Qar announced recording about 20 cases of hemorrhagic fever in the governorate since the beginning of this year [2022].

On 20 Apr 2022, Al-Najaf governorate (180 km or 112 mi southwest of the capital Baghdad) recorded the 1st laboratory-confirmed death from the hemorrhagic fever of a butcher from Al-Meshkhab district.

Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever is a widespread disease caused by a tick-borne virus (Nairovirus) of the Bunyaviridae family. The CCHF virus causes severe viral hemorrhagic fever outbreaks, with a case fatality rate of 10–40%.

Animals become infected by the bite of infected ticks and the virus remains in their bloodstream for about one week after infection, allowing the tick-animal-tick cycle to continue when another tick bites. Although a number of tick genera are capable of becoming infected with CCHF virus, ticks of the genus Hyalomma are the principal vector.