ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Kurdish minister of health said several trucks from Baghdad carrying medicine and other medical necessities have arrived in the Kurdistan Region.
KRG Health Minister Dr. Rekawt Hamarashid told Rudaw that following their recent visit to Baghdad and meeting with Iraqi Health Minister Adila Hamud, the Iraqi health ministry sent the KRG 11 trucks of medicine and they have now arrived in the Kurdistan Region.
He confirmed that the Iraqi government will send the KRG medicine and other medical necessities worth 170 billion Iraqi dinars in 2018.
He said this is a good start in improving relations between the two health ministries for 2018, and assured that medical supplies will continue.
He also said that the Iraqi government sent the KRG medicine and other medical essentials worth 108 billion Iraqi dinars in 2017, less than needed causing a shortage in health centers.
After the ISIS takeover of many Sunni provinces in the summer of 2014, 1.8 million people were displaced and many of them sought shelter in the Kurdistan Region.
“This year, the Iraqi government is due to send us medicine and other medical necessities worth 170 billion Iraqi dinars,” Hamarashid said.
Hamarashid said in November that he was informed by his Iraqi counterpart that the reduction of the medical supplies to Erbil was not related to the deadlock of political relations between Erbil and Baghdad which had hit an all-time low in the wake of the referendum vote.
Kurdish officials say that the Iraqi government had sent Erbil its full 17-percent share of medicine until the budget dispute in 2014, when they began reducing the amount.
Kurdish health officials claim that much of the medicines they purchase go to internally displaced Iraqis from the center and south of the country.
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