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Kurdistan: Fourth group of children to fly
to Italy for life-saving treatment
14.3.2007 |
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March 14, 2007
Erbil, Kurdistan region (Iraq), -- 40
children from the Kurdistan Region and from Diyala,
Kirkuk and Nineveh governorates with
life-threatening illnesses will fly to Italy
tomorrow to receive specialist treatment that cannot
be provided in the Kurdistan Region. The children,
who will be sent on a specially chartered plane,
could die in the near future unless they receive
expert care for their serious heart conditions and
blood diseases.
This is the fourth flight to Italy in this
humanitarian project. Including those on tomorrow’s
flight, 194 children have gone to Italy for
treatment since the first mission in June 2006. So
far, 78 have returned totally cured, and six have
sadly died. 28 doctors from Kurdistan have also gone
to Italy at the same time for specialist training on
those illnesses.
Their families, five Kurdish and 16 Italian doctors
and medical staff will providing care for the
children during their trip and treatment. The
children suffer from congenital heart diseases,
cancer or leukaemia.
The project was made possible by the Kurdistan
Regional Government (KRG) and the Italian
Government, through the Mediterranean Institute of
Haematology (MIH), and upon the initiative of KRG
Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani.
The Kurdistan Region NGO Hevi, through its
children’s section called Nazdar, collected data on
the patients and made preparations for the trip
together with the KRG Ministry for Health. Hevi is
also funding the travel costs. In 2006 Hevi helped
1,665 people, including 718 children, to get
examined and treated in Baghdad,.
Plans to improve specialist medical treatment in
Kurdistan
The MIH medical team so far has examined more than
1,500 children to select the most urgent cases and
has donated six echocardiogram (heart ultrasound)
machines for diagnosing heart conditions.
The team has also discussed with Dr. Zryan Yones,
the KRG Minister for Health, plans to improve
treatment of blood disorders and the possibility of
setting up a unit for children’s heart surgery in
the Kurdistan Region. For this unit, the MIH has
offered to send paediatric surgeons from their
international network, until doctors from the
Kurdistan Region finish their specialist training.
For the thalassemia and cancer cases, MIH has
offered to provide a revolutionary treatment using
bone marrow transplants. It has taken blood samples
for analysis from 1,115 relatives of 192 patients.
MIH has also carried out special blood tests, called
HLA typing, on 478 individuals to find potential
bone marrow donors for 92 children. As the children
receiving the transplants will have to stay in Italy
for a year until their treatment is finished, they
will travel with their families and the bone marrow
donors.
According to sufferers’ organisations, there are
over 5,000 reported cases of congenital heart
disease, and over 2,000 cases of thalassemia, in the
Kurdistan Region and Kirkuk. As no scientific
investigation has yet been made, the reasons for the
extremely high incidences of these diseases are not
known.
krg org
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