KRG Health Ministry: no AIDS cases recorded in 2017

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Kurdistan’s Ministry of Health has announced that no cases of AIDS have been recorded in the Kurdistan Region in 2017. 

“No cases of AIDS have so far been recorded in the Kurdistan Region,” the KRG Health Ministry said in a statement released on the World AIDS Day on Friday.

“It’s good to see that international efforts to confront AIDS have been successful”, it added.

The statement has also said that AIDS cases were at the lowest level over the past 30 years in the Kurdistan Region during which only 26 AIDS cases have been recorded. It said five of the recorded cases resulted in the death of the people suffering from the disease. 

It explained that Kurdish hospitals have conducted nearly 397,000 advance examinations to control and prevent the spread of the disease, adding that a “a number of foreign nationals tested positive,” and therefore were sent back home.

It is mainly foreigners asking for residence permits in the region who are tested for HIV/AIDS in the Kurdistan Region, under an Iraqi law that dates back to Saddam Hussein’s time.