A fire in a Baghdad hospital killed at least 23 people on April 24, 2021. – / AP / SIPA
The horror has just been added to a dramatic health situation in Iraq. At least 23 people were killed in a fire started overnight from Saturday to Sunday in an intensive care unit treating Covid-19 patients in Baghdad.
The explosion is due to a “breach of safety conditions in the storage of oxygen cylinders”, explained medical sources, reporting dozens of injured. Videos posted on social media showed firefighters attempting to put out the flames on the floors of Ibn al-Khatib hospital on the south-eastern outskirts of the capital amid a mob of sick and relatives trying to escape from the building.
The million contaminated mark exceeded
A medical source from the hospital for its part affirmed that “thirty patients were in this intensive care unit” reserved for the most serious cases in Baghdad, capital of the Arab country having recorded the greatest number of contaminations with Covid-19 . For its part, the Civil Defense affirmed to the official Iraqi agency to have been able to “save 90 people out of 120 sick and relatives” who were on the spot, while refusing to communicate an exact toll of the dead and wounded.
Covid-19 cases surpassed one million in Iraq on Wednesday, a country of 40 million people in a shortage of drugs, doctors and hospitals for decades. In total, according to the Ministry of Health, 1,025,288 Iraqis have been infected since February 2020, of which 15,217 have died. The ministry says it carries out around 40,000 tests every day, a very low rate in a country with several cities of more than two million inhabitants, where the population density is high and permanent promiscuity.
Dilapidated hospitals
In lack of medical equipment to receive patients, who generally prefer to install an oxygen cylinder in their homes rather than go to dilapidated hospitals, Iraq has nevertheless launched its vaccination campaign. The country has received a total of nearly 650,000 doses of different vaccines, almost all in the form of a donation or via the international Covax program aimed at guaranteeing equitable access to vaccines. Nearly 300,000 people have already received at least a first dose, according to the Ministry of Health, which continues to campaign to convince a population very skeptical of the vaccine and who has shunned masks since the start of the epidemic.