Iraq imports oxygen from Turkey as covid cases rise

An Iraqi COVID-19 patient lies down in a waiting hall next to oxygen bottles at the Ibn Al-Khatib Hospital in Baghdad, on 25 April 2021 [AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP via Getty Images]

Iraq has started to import oxygen tanks from Turkey following a notable increase in coronavirus infections, the Ministry of Health announced yesterday.

“Over the past few weeks, the country registered more than 9,000 daily infections, after weeks of consistently recording 4,000-5,000 new cases a day,” the ministry’s public clinics department head, Mohamed Al-Fartousi, told official INA.

“As the infection rates increase, Iraq was forced to import oxygen from Turkey through the Kurdistan region,” Al-Fartousi said. He did not provide details about the total volume of imported oxygen.

Iraq has been suffering a poor healthcare infrastructure due to decades of successive wars and rampant corruption.

So far, a total of 1,564,828 have contracted the virus in Iraq, 18,347 of whom have died, and 1,420,995 others have recovered, according to the US’ Worldometers.

Last week, some 92 people were killed in a fire at a COVID-19 isolation ward in the capital Baghdad.

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