UN: Iraq’s deadly cholera outbreak could spread regionally

A deadly cholera outbreak in Iraq is showing signs of spreading into neighboring Syria, Kuwait and Bahrain, sparking fears that it could spiral into a regional epidemic, leading the United Nations to launch a new health information campaign, UNICEF'S Iraq director Peter Hawkins told Al Jazeera on Friday.

Since mid-September, more than 2,200 people across Iraq have contracted cholera, a bacterial disease that if left untreated can kill its victims through dehydration and kidney failure, Hawkins said. The disease has so-far killed six people in Iraq.

Cholera cases have also been reported in Syria, Kuwait and Bahrain.

The disease spreads mainly through contaminated water and poor sanitation, and the outbreak in Iraq has been "exacerbated by the fact that much of the country's infrastructure has all but collapsed," Hawkins said. It has worsened over the last few days because of excessive rainfall that triggered flooding in Baghdad and surrounding areas.

The United Nations has launched a major effort to stop the spread of the disease, including planning an information campaign for December, when millions of Shia Muslims are due to visit Iraq for Arbaeen, a religious ritual marking the end of an annual mourning period for the Prophet Muhammad's grandson Hussein.

UNICEF is working with clerics in the Shia shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala to convey information about how to guard against cholera, Hawkins said.

The outbreak can be traced to a number of factors, including low water levels in the Euphrates and winter flooding that has contaminated the river and shallow wells with sewage water.

The war against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which controls large swathes of territory in northern and western Iraq, has also played a part. The conflict has displaced more than 3 million people, with many living in camps where conditions are conducive to the spread of cholera ­— a bite of tainted food or sip of contaminated water is enough to cause infection.

Hawkins said UNICEF has only limited access to areas controlled by ISIL, which swept across the Syrian border in mid-2014 in a bid to establish a “caliphate.”

Higher military expenditures and other costs associated with the battle against ISIL have aggravated a cash crunch for Iraq, a major OPEC oil producer that has suffered from the drop in global crude prices over the past year.

A higher proportion of the government budget is being spent on security at the expense of other services and infrastructure, including the water supply, Hawkins said.

One in five of all confirmed cases of cholera in Iraq is among children, and in large parts of the country the start of the school year was delayed by a month as a precaution, UNICEF said in a statement.

To help stem the outbreak, UNICEF is providing bottled water and oral rehydration salts and installing community water tanks, but like most humanitarian operations in Iraq, it is severely underfunded.

Al Jazeera and Reuters