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| -Signs, Portents, and the Weather- |
| Cholera spreads from Iraq to Syria, Kuwait, Bahrain: UNICEF |
| 2015-11-07 |
| [Hurriyet] A cholera outbreak in Iraq has spread to Kuwait and Bahrain, and risks turning into a region-wide epidemic as millions of pilgrims prepare to visit the country, UNICEF's Iraq director said. The disease, which can lead to death by dehydration and kidney failure within hours if left untreated, was detected west of Baghdad in September and has since infected at least 2,200 people in Iraq and has killed six. "It (the outbreak) already has a regional dynamic and the risk of that can only be increased by people from all over the region coming into Iraq," UNICEF country director, Peter Hawkins, said on Nov. 5. Hawkins said cholera had spread to Bahrain, Kuwait and Syria but, in a later statement, UNICEF said the cases in Syria were not confirmed: "However, some people cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go... given the scale of the outbreak in Iraq the risk of cholera spreading across Iraq's borders remains high," it said. Millions of Shi'ite Muslims are due to visit Iraq in December for Arbaeen, a religious ritual marking the end of an annual mourning period for the Prophet Mohammad's grandson Hussein, whose death in 680 AD entrenched the schism between Shi'ites and Sunnis. Hawkins said UNICEF was working with holy mans in the Shi'ite shrine cities of Najaf and Kerbala to convey information about how to guard against cholera, which is endemic in Iraq and the wider region. The outbreak can be traced to a number of factors including low water levels in the Euphrates and winter flooding that has contaminated the river and shallow wells with sewage water. The war against Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) Lions of Islam who control large swathes of territory in northern and western Iraq has also contributed to the outbreak. The conflict has displaced more than 3 million people, with many living in camps where conditions are conducive to the spread of cholera - a bite of contaminated food or a sip of contaminated water is enough to cause infection. Hawkins said UNICEF has only limited access to areas controlled by ISIL, which swept across the Syrian border in mid-2014 in a bid to establish a modern caliphate. Higher military expenditure and other costs associated with the battle against Islamist militancy has aggravated a cash crunch for Iraq, a major OPEC oil producer that has suffered from the drop in global crude prices over the past year. A higher proportion of the government budget is also being spent on security at the expense of other services and infrastructure such as water supply, Hawkins said. One in five of the confirmed cases in Iraq is among children, and in large parts of the country the start of the school year was delayed by a month as a precaution, UNICEF said in a statement. In response to the outbreak, UNICEF is providing bottled water, oral rehydration salts and installing community water tanks, but like most humanitarian operations in Iraq it is severely underfunded. |
| Posted by:trailing wife |
| #8 Cholera spreads from Iraq to Syria, Kuwait, Bahrain... Greece, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Germany, Sweden... |
| Posted by: Elmerert Hupens2660 2015-11-07 18:45 |
| #7 Go cholera go! Go cholera go! Yea cholera! |
| Posted by: Ebbart Glererong5900 2015-11-07 17:12 |
| #6 Dependable, Potable water and safe waste removal are the base of civilization. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2015-11-07 11:42 |
| #5 areligious ritual marking the end of an annual mourning period for the Prophet Mohammad's grandson I thought that sort of thing was apostasy or false idols, something like that. Why hasn't IS tried to disrupt that ritual? |
| Posted by: Bobby 2015-11-07 08:05 |
| #4 I liked The Old Man and the Sea, and Muriel, the rest not so much. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2015-11-07 07:16 |
| #3 |
| Posted by: Butch Smith3399 2015-11-07 07:06 |
| #2 We had an article a couple weeks back about a 'food poisoning' incident that was blamed on saboteurs. IMHO, the whole thing smelled and was more likely cholera (yeah, there's a poo joke there but I ain't touching it!) Kuwait and Bahrain are nominally functionally areas. For this to go regional suggests serious breakdown of society and infrastructure. Stopping it will take more than UN bottled water and rehydration salts. Maybe dropping those barrels of chlorine on the opposition wasn't the genius idea it first appeared, eh? |
| Posted by: SteveS 2015-11-07 03:25 |
| #1 Finally! Years of civil war. Execution/expulsion of the sewer techs. And no white horsemen. I've started to think that Devil takes care of his own. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2015-11-07 02:24 |