Cases of Cholera Reach Baghdad

World Health Organization employees have confirmed the first cases of cholera have broken out in the Iraqi capital. The outbreak is a predictable consequence of the sustained lack of basic services in Baghdad – a city once renowned as the crown jewel of the Middle East.

The cholera outbreak in Iraq this summer had been centered near Kirkuk and Sulaimaniya, in Kurdistan, where at least 10 people have died. In a report released Sept. 14, the W.H.O. said that cholera had been clinically confirmed in more than 1,055 cases so far in Kurdistan and was suspected in more than 24,500 cases of diarrhea and vomiting. In Baghdad, the W.H.O. representative for Iraq, Dr. Naeema al-Gasseer, said laboratory tests confirmed one 25-year-old woman had contracted the disease; a second case was suspected but not confirmed, she said. A hospital worker in the Sadr City area of eastern Baghdad said one patient there appeared to be sick with cholera. That case also was not confirmed.

The first cases of cholera appeared in Baghdad on Thursday, in a sign the epidemic that has already sickened thousands in northern Iraq is now spreading more widely in a population made vulnerable by war to a normally preventable disease.

The World Health Organization and Iraqi Red Crescent Society confirmed two cases here and Iraqi television reported another case, in a 7-month-old baby, in Basra, far to the south.

People contract cholera by ingesting water or food contaminated with the feces of an infected person. Roughly one in 20 infected people become severely ill, with profuse diarrhea, vomiting and leg cramps, while others have mild or no symptoms but carry the disease.

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