Cancerous diseases are prevalent in southern Iraq, especially Basra governorate
The Director-General of the Southern Environment Department, Walid Hamid, announced that 2,000 cancer patients are registered in Basra annually due to oil flares that emit a lot of extracted toxic gases. The official news agency quoted Hamid as saying that the toxic gases extracted lead to direct infections of lung cancer and other types of it. He pointed out that the statistics received from the Ministry of Health confirm that “2000 cases of cancer are recorded annually in Basra because of those flares.”
