Militants may have contracted deadly Ebola virus

oge okonkwo

January 2, 2015 5:58 PM

Officials of the World Health Organization officials say they are yet to confirm the reports

Reports from Iraqi media suggests that Islamic State militants may have contracted the deadly Ebola virus.

Officials of the World Health Organization officials say they are yet to confirm the reports.

However, an International Business Timesarticle confirms that three Iraqi news outlets reported that an Ebola patient showed up at a hospital in Mosul, a city 250 miles north of Baghdad that’s been under ISIS control since June 2014.

Christy Feig, WHO’s director of communications, casted doubt on the report though, telling reporters, “We have no official notification from [the Iraqi government] that it is Ebola.”

Reports say it isn’t clear whether any disease experts or doctors in Mosul are even able to test for the Ebola virus.

A Kurdish official, who was convinced the cases are Ebola, told the Kurdish media outlet Xendan that the militants’ symptoms were similar to those of the Ebola virus.

Nonetheless, Ebola symptoms, like nausea and vomiting, diarrhoea, and bleeding, are also similar to those associated with a number of other diseases, including malaria, Lassa fever, yellow fever viruses and the Marburg virus.

Iraq’s pro-government newspaper, al Sabaah, reported that the disease arrived in Mosul from “terrorists” who came “from several countries” and Africa.

According to a Washington Post report, the majority of the ISIS’ African fighters came from Tunisia, while others came from Morocco, Libya, Egypt, Algeria, Sudan and Somalia — none of which reported any Ebola cases in 2014.

Benjamin T. Decker, an intelligence analyst with the Levantine Group, said that over the past few weeks, militants affiliated with ISIS have executed more than a dozen doctors in Mosul, “U.N. workers have thus far been prohibited from entering ISIS-controlled territory in both Iraq and Syria,” he said.

Decker added that, “In this context, the lack of medical infrastructure, supplies and practitioners in the city suggests that the outbreak could quickly lead to further infection of both ISIS fighters and residents of Mosul.”

oge okonkwo