Kurdish health minister reassured by Baghdad of medicine deliveries
"The [Iraqi] health minister informed me that Baghdad would continue to send medicines and provide medical needs to the Kurdistan Region," said Rasheed, the Kurdish health minister in a press conference.
The minister added he was informed by his Iraqi counterpart that the reduction of the medical supplies to Erbil was not related to the recent deadlock of political relations between Erbil and Baghdad which has hit an all-time low in the wake of the referendum vote.
Citing the Iraqi health minister, Rasheed explained that the Kurdistan Region's budget earmarked for medical supplies was 108 billion Iraqi dinars for 2017 and "that sum has been already spent."
The Iraqi government has cut off Kurdish Region's share of medical supplies for more than a month now, health officials have warned.
Baghdad did send Erbil its full 17 percent share of medicine only two or three years before reducing the amount in subsequent years and then stopping a month ago altogether, Kurdish officials reported.
The Kurdish minister added they were assured by Baghdad that they would spend 170 billion dinars on medical needs of the Region in 2018.
He noted, overall, Baghdad meets "only 45 percent of our demands."
He said it is expected they will need medicines to the amount of 300 billion dinars in the coming years.
He said he had warned the Iraqi health minister of the dangers of cutting off the Region's medial needs making Erbil "face a crisis especially in terms of providing vaccines."
Kurdish health officials claim that much of the medicines they purchase goes to internally displaced Iraqis from the center and south of the country.
After the ISIS takeover of many Sunni provinces in the summer of 2014, 1.8 million people were displaced and many of them sought shelter in the Kurdistan Region.