NASIRIYAH, Iraq: Spraying a cow with pesticides, health workers target blood-sucking ticks at the heart of Iraq's worst detected outbreak of a fever that causes people to bleed to death.
The sight of the health workers, dressed in full protective kit, is one that has become common in the Iraqi countryside, as the Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) spreads, jumping from animals to humans.
THREAT OF PESTILENCE A worker from the health department disinfects calves at a small farm near a house in the village of Al-Bojari in Iraq’s southern Dhi Qar province, where a woman was infected with the tick-borne virus Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic (CCHF) illness, on May 25, 2022, during the country’s worst detected outbreak of the illness. The CCHF virus has no vaccine and onset can be swift, with a victim suffering from severe bleeding, both internally as well as externally and especially from the nose. It causes death in as many as two-fifths of cases, according to medics. AFP PHOTO
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