Mosul IDPs leave Kurdistan with $85M medical debt: Health Minister
Almost 99 percent of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and wounded Iraqi troops from Mosul receive treatment at Erbil hospitals, said a Kurdish Health Minister on Sunday.
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) – Almost 99 percent of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and wounded Iraqi troops from Mosul receive treatment at Erbil hospitals, said a Kurdish Health Minister on Sunday.
In an interview with Kurdistan24, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Health Minister Rekawt Hama Rasheed explained the war against the Islamic State (IS) and the Mosul operation, in particular, put a heavy load on the Region.
“Most of the health services in the Kurdistan Region hospitals go to the Mosul IDPs,” Rasheed said.
“After the Mosul operation had begun, 99 percent of Mosul health services were laid on Kurdistan in general and Erbil hospitals in particular,” Rasheed continued.
He also mentioned “almost 1 percent” of the patients in hospitals in Erbil were people from the Kurdistan Region, the rest consisted of Mosul civilians and wounded Iraqi soldiers.
According to Rasheed, the Health Minister of Iraq had visited Erbil and witnessed the reality of the issue.
“I won’t say they haven’t sent anything to help Kurdistan, but their assistance is not as much as needed,” the KRG Health Minister revealed.
The Kurdistan Region is home to over 1.8 million Syrian refugees and Iraqi IDPs who fled from Mosul and other parts of the country due to the threat of IS.
The insurgent group occupied Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq, in June 2014 and shortly expanded to other areas in the country.
Iraqi and Kurdish Peshmerga forces launched the Mosul operation on Oct. 17, 2016.
The troops had since advanced and liberated half of the city from the eastern side of the Tigris river.
Editing by Karzan Sulaivany