Zahra Hussein, a 49-year-old cancer patient, contracted COVID-19 over month ago. She was finally discharged from hospital on Sunday after making a full recovery.

Testing positive on March 7, Zahra was among the first COVID-19 cases recorded in the Kurdistan Region of Erbil. She contracted the virus will receiving treatment for cancer in Iran, then already the regional epicenter of the outbreak. 

For 35 days, she was treated at Erbil's Peshmerga Hospital, a specially designed $4.8 million facility built with assistance from the German government and opened in January 2019 to treat members of the Kurdistan Region's forces wounded in action.

"I will for ever remain grateful for the Peshmerga Hospital staff," Zahra told Rudaw on Saturday. "They worked tirelessly for me."

The hospital was designated as a specialised coronavirus treatment center on March 5, five days after the Kurdistan Region's first confirmed cases of the virus.

Zahra is among 145 people confirmed to have recovered from COVID-19 in the Kurdistan Region by April 12, according to Kurdistan Regional Government health ministry figures. To date, 330 cases have been recorded in the Kurdistan Region.

Hospital official Sherko Saadi told Rudaw that a total of 16 COVID-19 patients have so far been treated and discharged from the facility; six patients remain. 

Photos and reporting by Bilind T. Abdullah, translation by Zhelwan Z. Wali