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Source: https://www.thechronicleherald.ca/ne...-spike-500748/
Violence mounts against Iraqi doctors as COVID cases spike
Amina Ismail
Published: 7 hours ago
Updated: 4 hours ago
By Amina Ismail
NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqi doctor Tariq Al-Sheibani remembers little else beyond cowering on the ground as a dozen relatives of a patient, who had just died of COVID-19, beat him unconscious.
About two hours later the 47-year-old director of Al-Amal Hospital in the southern city of Najaf woke up in a different clinic with bruises all over his body.
"All the doctors are scared," said Sheibani, speaking at his home in Kufa a few weeks after the Aug. 28 attack. "Every time a patient dies, we all hold our breath."
He is one of many doctors struggling to do their job as COVID-19 cases rise sharply in Iraq.
They are working within a health service that has been left to decay through years of civil conflict and underfunding, and now face the added threat of physical attack by grieving and desperate families...
Violence mounts against Iraqi doctors as COVID cases spike
Amina Ismail
Published: 7 hours ago
Updated: 4 hours ago
By Amina Ismail
NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqi doctor Tariq Al-Sheibani remembers little else beyond cowering on the ground as a dozen relatives of a patient, who had just died of COVID-19, beat him unconscious.
About two hours later the 47-year-old director of Al-Amal Hospital in the southern city of Najaf woke up in a different clinic with bruises all over his body.
"All the doctors are scared," said Sheibani, speaking at his home in Kufa a few weeks after the Aug. 28 attack. "Every time a patient dies, we all hold our breath."
He is one of many doctors struggling to do their job as COVID-19 cases rise sharply in Iraq.
They are working within a health service that has been left to decay through years of civil conflict and underfunding, and now face the added threat of physical attack by grieving and desperate families...