Strange disease plagues children in one Kirkuk village for almost 40 years

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – For the last four decades a rare and unidentified disease has spread among children in the village of Kaif, northwest of Kirkuk. At least 40 children have suffered hair loss and then total baldness ever since a missile strike in 1982 in the early days of the Iran-Iraq War.

Both male and female children of different ages have been struck by the affliction, which residents say they first recorded shortly after a missile fell on Kaif, near the town of al-Dibs.

Residents believe the missile came from Iranian forces and that it was carrying unspecified “contaminants.”

Speaking to Kurdistan 24 recently, a 12-year-old said, “we feel sad when we see other children who have hair when we don’t.”

The village’s residents also complain of other birth defects in newborns due to pollution in the area, not far from local oil fields. Others say there is great pollution right in the village, which suffers from a lack of basic services and clean water.

They have recorded the deaths of two newborns in the last six months.

A Kurdistan 24 correspondent who made a video documentary about Kaif and its strange phenomenon reported that residents said the Kirkuk health department has never visited them and there is no health facility in the village.

One resident, Mahmoud Shahab, said, “we still don’t know the cause of this disease – the baldness – how it occurs, and why.”

Halo Ghazi, an official from the Debs Organization for Environmental Protection, confirmed there were roughly 650 families living in Kaif, and said all the children were at risk of catching the disease.

Residents have blamed local authorities for their failure to treat them or investigate the cause of the disease, while pleading for the establishment of a health facility in the village.

Editing by Joanne Stocker-Kelly