On the night of Saturday to Sunday, at least 23 people perished in the fire of an intensive care unit dedicated to Covid patients of a Baghdad hospital in Iraq.
A fire killed at least 23 people overnight from Saturday to Sunday in an intensive care unit for Covid-19 patients in Iraq, the Arab country having recorded the most contaminations and in medical shortage for decades.
These are oxygen cylinders “stored without compliance with security conditions” which are at the origin of the disaster, medical sources told AFP. One more ordeal for the country of 40 million inhabitants whose health system has never recovered from four decades of repeated wars.
About fifty wounded
In the middle of the night, when dozens of relatives were at the bedside of “thirty patients in this intensive care unit” of the Ibn al-Khatib hospital, reserved for the most serious cases in Baghdad, flames spread over them. floors, a medical source reported.
Videos posted on social media showed firefighters attempting to put out the blaze amid a mob of sick people and relatives trying to escape from the building, located on the southeastern outskirts of Baghdad.
Medical and security sources told AFP that 23 people were killed, while around 50 others were injured.
The Civil Defense for its part 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.
A fire due to negligence
This fire, due according to various sources to negligence, often linked to the endemic corruption in Iraq, immediately provoked an intense debate in the country. The governor of Baghdad, Mohammed Jaber, demanded “from the Ministry of Health for a commission of inquiry so that those who have not done their job are brought to justice”.
In the middle of the night, while the Civil Defense announced that it had controlled the fire, the Ministry of Health had not issued any press release or given any assessment.
Covid-19 cases surpassed one million in Iraq on Wednesday, in a shortage of drugs, doctors and hospitals for decades but which, probably because of its population, one of the youngest in the world, records a number relatively low deaths from Covid-19.
In total, according to the Ministry of Health, 1,025,288 Iraqis have been infected since the appearance in February 2020 of the new coronavirus in the country, of which 15,217 have died.
A shortage of medical equipment
The Ministry of Health says it conducts 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.
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.
In all, he received 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.
Original article published on BFMTV.com
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