By Sirwa Hawrami
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The Iraqi government has cut off Kurdish Region’s share of medical supplies for more than a month now, said an official in Erbil, warning of a crisis in the health sector.
“It has been four to five weeks since hospitals in the Kurdistan Region started suffering lack of medicines,” said Saman Barzinji, general manager of the Erbil Health Department. “The reason is the mechanism of the sending of medicines from Baghdad to Erbil."
Barzinji added that this is not the first time the federal government fails to send the Kurdish region its medical supplies.
He said that Baghdad did send Erbil its full 17 percent share of medicine only two or three years before reducing the amount in subsequent years and then stopping a month ago altogether.
“Baghdad has not sent any medicines since last month, discriminating against the provinces,” he added.
Dr. Nizar Ismat, of the Duhok Health Department, told Rudaw Radio on Monday that despite caring for the majority of refugees from Mosul and being overwhelmed by the large number of patients, the Iraqi government covered “only 10 percent of the medical needs of Duhok province,” in 2016.
Ismat added the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has done its part by “allocating two billion Iraqi dinars to buying medical supplies. As there is no cash in the banks, we are forced to buy them on loans.”
Much of the medicine they have to purchase, Ismat said, “Goes to Iraqi refugees from Mosul, the center and south of Iraq.”
To offset this shortage of medicine the KRG has turned to borrowing medicine from private companies to the amount of $100 million so far.
After the ISIS takeover of much of several Sunni provinces in the summer of 2014, 1.8 million people were displaced and many of them sought shelter in the Kurdistan Region.
Great numbers settled in cities, especially in Duhok.
Ismat described the situation in Duhok as “dire”.
In 2016 alone two million refugees and IDPs visited the health centers of Duhok, 20,000 on a daily basis.
The head of the Erbil Health Department said that Baghdad even fails to send medicine for the IDPs.
“The supplies supposed to be sent to the IDPs were not sent at all,” Barzinji said. “And the medical needs they sent didn’t last even a week.”
“This lack of medicines is alarming and has to be solved before a catastrophe happens.”
