ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — At least five women have been killed by cholera in the Abu Ghraib district of Baghdad, while many more are infected—some of them in critical condition—Baghdad Governor Ali al-Tamimi announced Friday. Five women had reportedly died in the district, and 65 people were infected by the disease. According to the statement, 25 of them are in critical condition. “The Baghdad governor arrived in the town of Abu Ghraib to meet government and health officials to discuss a plan aimed to fight the cholera that hit the town,” the office of the governor announced in a statement. According to the statement, the Iraqi government is being helped by the United Nations’ Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to provide residents with safe drinking water. UNICEF has provided the Abu Ghraib district with 50,000 boxes of bottled water, 1,000 20-liter water bottles and chlorine tablets to add to drinking water. The Baghdad governor has previously announced that cholera has become a problem in Abu Ghraib due to unclean water. A lack of clean drinking water in Iraq in 2007 led to an outbreak of the disease. In 2007 a total of approximately 7,000 people were infected, with 10 deaths reported. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), large scale outbreaks of cholera were also reported in the Kurdistan region in 2007, 2008 and 2012.
