Again Cholera

Sorry for not having any post lately, in fact I was so busy in a way couldn't find time to blog, but no need to worry, here I am, let's start again.

This month I am working outside Hawler city, during our 2 years of rotation we have to spend 3 months outside the city, this was my first month, I was working in Hareer, which is a small town belonging to Erbil Province.

During my work here, I've received many official papers from both the Ministry of Health and from the Directorate of Health in Hawler, notifying us about the Cholera Outbreak in the South Cities of Iraq, and to take all necessary measures to prevent it's occurance or to combat it.

This is not the first time, last year there were another outbreak in this country, but that time was in the north region, and in Kurdistan.

According to the Al-Jazeera English official website, a state of emergency has been declared in Iraq's Babil Province after six people died from cholera.

It's worth to mention majority of Iraqi people don't have pure water, and the route of spreading this disease is feco-oral.

To read more on BBC, click here, and on Al-Jazeera English, click here.

I think that's all for now.

Even Our Animals "Cont."

Roj Bash...

Finally I could manage to start publishing again, sorry for not publishing anything lately, but actually I was somehow busy with work.

Meanwhile, I found something on the BBC site, that proves something very important, and directly related to our old post, about renaming and changing the scientific animals in the North Kurdistan, Turkish Kurdistan, here is the news , this news last updated on Tuesday, 8 March, 2005:

Turkey renames 'divisive' animal

Turkey has said it is changing the names of three animals found on its territory to remove references to Kurdistan or Armenia.

The environment ministry says the Latin names of the red fox, the wild sheep and the roe deer will be altered.

The red fox for instance, known as Vulpes Vulpes Kurdistanica, will now be known as Vulpes Vulpes. Turkey has uneasy relations with neighbouring Armenia and opposes Kurdish separatists in Turkey.

The ministry said the old names were contrary to Turkish unity.

"Unfortunately there are many other species in Turkey which were named this way with ill intentions. This ill intent is so obvious that even species only found in our country were given names against Turkey's unity," a ministry statement quoted by Reuters news agency said.

Some Turkish officials say the names are being used to argue that Armenians or Kurds had lived in the areas where the animals were found.

Name Changes:

Red fox known as Vulpes Vulpes Kurdistanica becomes Vulpes Vulpes.

Wild sheep called Ovis Armeniana becomes Ovis Orientalis Anatolicus.

Roe deer known as Capreolus Capreolus Armenus becomes Capreolus Cuprelus Capreolus.

Turkey has tense ties with its eastern neighbour Armenia, which it does not officially recognise.

Armenians accuse Turkey of genocide, saying 1.5 million of their people died or were deported from their homelands under Turkish Ottoman rule.

Turkey denies the genocide and says the death count is inflated.

For the last two decades, Turkey has also been fighting Kurdish separatists, who have sought an independent state in Turkey's south-east.

Thanks for BBC for publishing such interesting news.

MBC Persia ..!!

I wrote these weeks ago, but couldn’t connect to the net to publish it, I saved in my computer and now I will try to publish it.

That day I was sitting and watching TV with some of my friends, we were watching a movie in famous channel MBC2 (MBC stands for Middle East Broadcasting Center, it’s based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates – UAE -) which broadcasts only Hollywood movies, but during the break time, they advertised for something, which took my attention.

They were advertising for a new channel, belonging to MBC Series, MBC-Persia, it was very unusual to see an Arab based satellite TV, launching another channel by Persian language, this is, to my knowledge, the very first step in this aspect.

On the other hand, it’s being almost 5 years, that Islamic Republic of Iran launched it’s own channel in Arabic language, directed to Arabic people and nation, to converse them and to make them up-to-date with Persian World in all aspects. Al-Alam News Network is a Tehran-based Arabic-language news channel. Established in 2003 and it broadcasts continuously. Al-Alam is an Arabic word which means, the World.

Even they said that Al-Alam Channel can be watched without having a Satellite Receiver, directly in some portions in Iraq, but I never experienced this here in Erbil. But I have a friend, he graduated in one of the colleges in Baghdad and he was there , in Baghdad, during "American invasion" to Iraq, I asked him this and he said yes, we were watching and following the news directly from Al-Alam channel without using any dish.

This strategy, broadcasting programs in different language other than your mother language, is very well know in the western world, and the best example is BBC.

When USA leaded Coalition force invaded Iraq, first of all, they launched an Arabic Satellite, Al-Hurra, specific to Iraq, to talk to them.

No body can deny the importance and effect of BBC-Arabic Radio and Montecarlio Radio, broadcasting since decades to the Arab World, at the same time, what these channels achieved is not easy to say.