Oxygen cylinders “stored without respecting security conditions” are said to be at the origin of the tragedy in a Baghdad hospital dedicated to Covid-19.
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Medical and security sources told AFP that 23 people were dead and around 50 injured. (Pretext image)
AFP
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 with the most contamination and with a dilapidated health system 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.
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.
“Choked by smoke”
“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 uploaded to social media showed firefighters attempting to put out the blaze amid a mob of sick people and relatives trying to escape the building on the southeastern outskirts of Baghdad.
Medical and security sources told AFP that 23 people were killed and about 50 injured. The Civil Defense claimed to have been able to “rescue 90 people out of 120 sick and close ones” who were on the scene, while refusing to provide an exact assessment of the dead and injured.
Negligence
This fire, presumably due to negligence, which is often linked to endemic corruption in Iraq, immediately sparked intense debate. The hashtag “Resignation of the Minister of Health” was the top keyword on Twitter in Iraq.
It is a “crime” 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”, denounced the Commission human rights government. She called on Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kazimi to dismiss Health Minister Hassan al-Tamimi to “bring him to justice”.
Mr. Kazimi responded by announcing “an investigation” – as also called for the President of the Republic Barham Saleh and the head of Parliament Mohammed al-Halboussi – which he said he wanted the results “within 24 hours”. He suspended from their functions the head of Health of the eastern sector of Baghdad, the director of the hospital and the heads of security and technical maintenance.
They are being questioned and no one, he said, and will not be released “until those who are at fault are tried.” He also decreed three days of national mourning. Several hours after the fire, the Ministry of Health boasted of having “saved more than 200 patients”, promising “an accurate assessment of the dead and injured later”.
More than 15,000 dead
Covid-19 cases surpassed one million on Wednesday in Iraq, which lacks medicines, doctors and hospitals but which, probably because of its population, one of the youngest in the world, has a number of deaths due to Relatively low Covid-19. Officially 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.
The Ministry of Health indicates that it carries out around 40,000 tests every day, a very low rate in a country with several cities of more than two million inhabitants, where density and promiscuity are high. To avoid dilapidated hospitals, patients generally prefer to install an oxygen cylinder in their homes.
At the beginning of March, a timid vaccination campaign was launched in the country where the population, who has shunned masks since the start of the epidemic, remains very skeptical. Out of nearly 650,000 doses of different vaccines – almost all received in the form of a donation or via the international Covax program – around 300,000 have already been injected, according to the Ministry of Health.
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