The death toll from the fire that broke out on Saturday night to Sunday in 58 hospital for patients with covid-19 in Baghdad, including 28 patients on a ventilator, an official said today.
The report, released by Ali al-Bayati, a member of the government’s human rights committee, is the first to be released by an official source. An earlier report from medical sources put the death toll at 27.
The bomber struck shortly after noon in front of a police recruiting center at Baghdad’s Ibn al-Khatib Hospital, police said.
The fire was caused, according to the same sources, by negligence linked to endemic corruption in Iraq, a country of 40 million people severely affected by the coronavirus pandemic, while its hospitals are in poor condition and many doctors have migrated after 40 years of successive conflicts.
After the tragedy, the hashtag “Resignation of the Minister of Health” was first on Twitter at Iraq, as the citizens of the country are outraged by the incident.
Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kazimi, who declared three days of national mourning, said an investigation had been launched into the incident and called for results to be announced “in less than 24 hours”.
He made available the head of health in the eastern part of Baghdad, the director of the hospital and the heads of security and maintenance. All of them are being interrogated and will not be released “until those responsible for the tragedy are brought to justice,” al-Kazimi said.
In the early hours of Sunday morning, as dozens of relatives were at the side of “30 patients in the intensive care unit” of Ibn al-Khatib Hospital, where the serious cases are being treated, flames spread to all floors, according to a medical source.
“The hospital has no fire safety and the false ceilings allowed the fire to spread, which reached highly flammable objects,” the civil protection explained. “Most of the victims died because they had to move and came out of the ventilators. Others died from smoke inhalation. “
Citizens’ assistance
Medical sources had initially reported that 27 people had been killed and about 50 injured. Civil protection said it had “rescued 90 people out of 120 patients and relatives”, but declined to say the exact number of victims.
It is a “crime” against “patients with covid-19 who laid down their lives in the hands of the Ministry of Health and who instead of being treated died in the flames,” the government’s Human Rights Committee complained.
She called on Kazimi to expel Health Minister Hassan al-Tamimi in order to “be accountable to justice.”
Hours after the fire, Iraq’s health ministry said “more than 200 patients had been rescued” and vowed to provide “a specific toll of the dead and wounded later.”
Over one million cases of coronavirus
The death toll from covid-19 cases topped one million in Iraq on Wednesday, with more than 15,000 dead. The country, probably due to its population, one of the youngest in the world, has recorded a relatively small number of deaths from coronavirus.
The Ministry of Health announced that about 40,000 diagnostic coronavirus tests are performed daily, a small percentage in a country where there are many cities with more than two million inhabitants who often live stacked on top of each other.
In order to avoid going to hospitals many patients with covid-19 prefer to install an oxygen cylinder in their home.
In early March, a slow vaccination campaign was launched in a country with a particularly cautious population, which is reluctant to even wear a mask.
Of the approximately 650,000 doses of various covid-19 vaccines received by Iraq, mainly through the Covax program, about 300,000 have been administered, according to the Ministry of Health.
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