Category Archives: Health

Significant Rise in Suicide Rate in South of Kurdistan

KT News: According to a local hospital in the City of Sulaymani, south of Kurdistan, on Friday 12 February a 28-year-old young woman committed suicide by strangling herself with a rope, apparently after news of her parent’s separation. On Monday 15 February, another suicide was reported in the village of Bardarash, near Erbil, after a…

Tragic Death of Young Kurdish Musician

By Arian Mufid: The Sulaymani police announced yesterday that the young man who won the Rwanga Solo Musician Award just a few days earlier, on 8th December 2018, had committed suicide in his home in the district of Sarchya Sulaymani. Rehad Hama Aziz was 18 years old and in his fifth year at the music…

Allow Her Husband to Witness Her Giving Birth

By Tania Kurd Mirza: She is in childbirth, she is in so much pain, she feels like she is going to die…but the pain is joyful pain, she is giving birth to her child…yet why is her husband not allowed to be with her? In Kurdistan, hospital employees do not allow husbands to stay with their…

Saving the Children in Kurdistan and Iraq

By Carla Mufid: On my recent visit to my homeland Kurdistan I decided that, as it was Ramadan, I should give back to my community by helping those who are less fortunate than me. I did this by applying to be a volunteer at a Kurdish charity, which helps children all over Iraq, called Kurdistan…

Things to be Considered in Laboratory Testing: A Glimpse into the ‘Normal’ or Reference Range

By Rawaz Sulaiman: Generally speaking, laboratory tests have become a common way that any individual would accept to get some information about their health status. In fact it is a good way to get some evidence about any dubious cases. Approximately 80% of physicians’ medical decisions for diagnosis are based on information provided by lab…

Ebola: a Brief Outline and Some Key Facts

By Dr.Rhwa H. G. Qader: Nowadays, the Middle East (in general) and Kurdistan (in particular) are facing a range of crises, from Islamic State aggression to the economic crisis from the withholding of Kurdistan’s budget by the Iraqi government.These crises have widely become the center of media and public debate, discussed by many politicians, analysts, observers, and…

Psychological impacts on Yezidis

By Bnar Jalal Ali: Mount Sinjar, for the 37th time, was the savior of Yezidis when more than 20,000 from Sinjar fled there after ISIS militants took over the city, killing many and kidnapping hundreds of women. Yezidis fled in bare feet, many dying from hunger and dehydration under the burning sun. The scenes from…

Infection Control and Prevention in Kurdish Health Care

By Dezheen Zebari: This paper (fully entitled ‘Infection Control and Prevention in the Health Care Setting in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq’) is based on research I conducted in Kurdistan in 2012. I’ve stayed in touch with multiple health care providers currently practicing in different cities who have told me things have not changed at all.  My…

UNICEF: Mass vaccinations to prevent spread of polio in Kurdistan

KT News: UNICEF will work with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to carry out a mass vaccination campaign to prevent the spread of polio and other diseases among children displaced to Kurdistan by the Iraq conflict. About 300,000 refugees crossed into south Kurdistan territories last week to escape the fighting around Mosul after ISIS jihadists…

MERS-CoV in Kurdistan: Is Banning Umrah and Pilgrimage Justified?

By Goran Abdulla Zangana MBChB, MPH, PhD (Candidate): In an unprecedented decision, the Ministry of Health (MoH) of the Iraq Kurdistan Region (IKR) decided to ban travels by pilgrims to Mecca to undertake the Umrah as a precautionary measure to avoid an outbreak of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome-Coronavirus (MERS-CoV)[i]. The MoH is also considering…

Saddam’s poison gas – an ongoing contamination?

By Eric Bruneau: Khieli Hama is a Kurdish village on the Iranian border, close to Halabja, the Kurd’s martyr city where, on 16th March 1988, Saddam Hussein unleashed a chemical air attack killing 5000 people. In October 2013 the villagers of Khieli Hama tried to move bodies from a mass grave containing casualties of the…

Kurdistan Campaign for Hand Hygiene

By Chra Abdulla: When we are young our parents have always taught us to wash our hands after touching pets, playing in the garden, before/after eating and even after using the bathroom so that, by the time we become adults, hand washing becomes ‘second nature’. The skin on your hands is the first line of…

Antibiotic residues: another neglected potential health hazard in Iraqi-Kurdistan

By Rawaz Sulaiman: Previously, on KT, I talked about the overusing of antibiotics in our region and their negative impacts of public health. Here, I’d also like to shed some light on the usage of antibiotics in veterinary practice; more precisely, their negative effects on human health through animal products and the current role of…

Antibiotic overuse: a silent danger threatening public health and medical practice in Iraqi Kurdistan

 By Rawaz Sulaiman:  Antibiotics or antimicrobials are medications used to treat diseases caused by infectious agents such as bacteria and fungi, either through slowing down their growth or destroying them. Viruses, in contrast, do not respond to antibiotics at all. Selecting a proper and relevant antibiotic, for example, can be made through detection of pathogens in…

Emerging new bird flu strain H10N8

Rawaz

By Rawaz Sulaiman: Health experts around the worlds have been alarming people today about the discovery of a new strain of flu virus dubbed ‘H10N8’. The story began when scientists in China demonstrated the particular genetic make-up of a new bird flu virus that caused the death of 73 years old woman last December, this…