Kurdish member of Iraqi parliament dies during COVID-19 hospitalization
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – A lawmaker in the Iraqi parliament from the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) died of COVID-19 complications on Wednesday following nearly three months of hospitalization for the highly-infectious disease in the Kurdistan Region’s Duhok province, according to his family.
Aram Balatayi, 41, served as the spokesperson for the KDP bloc in the Iraqi Council of Representatives before contracting the coronavirus in December.
He was admitted to a hospital in Duhok shortly after his diagnosis, his attending physician told Kurdistan 24. While he received treatment, the infection spread to his lungs and affected them significantly enough that a ventilator was not effective.
“Thus, we had to put him on ECMO,” Dr. Abdulkhaliq, his doctor, told Kurdistan 24, referring to extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, a treatment that doctors sometimes use as a last-ditch effort when a patient's lungs and heart are too compromised to supply the body with enough oxygen to keep it alive.
Balatayi's condition was severe enough that even that did not ultimately save him.
The former lecturer at Duhok's Newruz University is survived by his wife and two children.
In another tragedy for the family, his father Najat Balatayi recently committed suicide, with some concluding that it was a result of despair at his son’s prolonged deterioration.
“His father reached a stage psychologically that he could not accept the reality of his son’s condition,” said the doctor.
Iraqi Parliament Speaker Mohammad Halbousi wrote in a condolence statement released after Balatayi's death on Wednesday that the lawmaker “was one of the representatives who were diligent and eager to perform their duties.”
According to a government tally, the Kurdistan Region has so far seen over 3,500 deaths as the result of COVID-19 since the first case was confirmed in there in early March 2020.
On Feb. 8, the provincial council of the autonomous region's capital of Erbil elected a new governor after his predecessor, too, died of the coronavirus nearly four months earlier.
Read More: Erbil elects new governor following predecessor’s COVID-19 death
Editing by John J. Catherine
