A tragedy is added to the tragedy: a fire killed at least 23 people on the night of Saturday 24 to Sunday 25 April, in an intensive care unit for Covid-19 patients in Iraq, the Arab country having recorded the more 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, explained medical sources to Agence France-Presse (AFP). One more ordeal for the country of forty million inhabitants whose health system has never recovered from four decades of repeated wars.
In the middle of the night, as dozens of loved ones stood by “Thirty patients in this intensive care unit” of the Ibn al-Khatib hospital, reserved for the most serious cases in Baghdad, flames have gained the floors, reported a medical source.
“The hospital did not have a fire protection system and the false ceilings allowed the fire to spread to highly flammable products”, indicates for its part the civil defense. “Most of the victims died because they were displaced and deprived of ventilators, while others were suffocated by smoke”, she continues.
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.
Negligence
Medical and security sources told AFP that 23 people were killed, while around 50 others were injured. Civil defense, for its part, told the official Iraqi agency that it was able to “Save 90 people out of 120 sick and loved ones” who were on the scene, while refusing to communicate an exact toll of the dead and wounded.
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. It’s a “Crime”, denounced the governmental Commission of Human Rights. “Against patients harassed by the Covid-19 who put their lives in the hands of the Ministry of Health and who instead of being cured perished in the flames”.
In its statement, the Commission calls on Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kazimi to dismiss Health Minister Hassan al-Tamimi and “To present him to justice”. The governor of Baghdad, Mohammed Jaber, has called for “At the Ministry of Health a commission of inquiry so that those who have not done their job are brought to justice”.
“Immediate investigation”
Mr. Kazimi responded by announcing “An immediate investigation with the people in charge at the ministry”. He claimed to “Make available to investigators the director of the hospital, the head of security and the team in charge of technical maintenance without releasing them until those who were at fault are judged”.
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 health ministry, more than a million Iraqis have been infected since the appearance in February 2020 of the new coronavirus in the country, of which more than 15,000 have died.
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, it has received nearly 650,000 doses of various 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 .