Baladi News – (Ibrahım Ramadan)
Assad’s regime admitted on Tuesday that 4600 cases of Leishmaniasis were documented in Hama city that the regime controls. However, the regime’s official in charge of fighting Leishmaniasis told media that the displaced escaping barrel-bombs and Russian airstrikes in the countryside are responsible for carrying the disease to the city.
Hama city residents were not exempt from the regime’s official criticism. He held them responsible for the spread of the disease without any reference to the government’s efforts to treat the infected people or stop the epidemic.
The official attributed the increase in the number of cases to the open sewerage, animal husbandry within residential buildings, the non-disposal of animal waste, and the negligence of cleaning hangars.
Leishmaniasis is an epidemic transmitted to humans when they are bitten by a sand fly, a small insect not visible to the naked eye. A bite causes a small red blister that soon takes a volcanic shape and expands unless it is treated. The fly could cause a yet more dangerous internal infection.
Bassel Ibrahim, an Assad's regime official, emphasized that the inflow of a big number of displaced civilians from the countryside was an additional factor in increasing the number of cases. The most prominent areas ravaged by Leishmaniasis, according to Assad’s regime, are the residents of Sawa’eq, Tishreen, al-Qusour, al-Faihaa, al-Arba’in, and Janoub al-Mal’ab.
Hama countryside, according to activists, suffers a wide spread of the epidemic amid many difficulties for doctors because to the destruction of 80% of the hospitals due to the Russian and Assad’s regime airstrikes. This is aggravated by the lack of medical support to stop the epidemic. Whereas medical sources emphasized the infection of hundreds of civilians because of the high destruction rate to houses as well as sewerage lines.