BACKGROUND Many adult cigarette smokers initiated the habit as adolescents. Adolescent tobacco use may be a marker of other unhealthy behaviours. There are limited data on the prevalence and correlates of cigarette smoking among in-school adolescents in Iraq. We aimed to estimate the prevalence of, and assess the socio-demographic correlates of current cigarette smoking among in-school adolesce...

Aim:This study was aimed to explore and describe the Kurdish women's perception of cervical cancer screening. Methods: A qualitative design based on a conventional content analysis approach. Purposive sampling was applied to 19 women chosen, who had a Pap smear or refused to have one. The study was performed in the Kurdistan Region, Iraq. Semi-structure din-depth individual interviews were carr...

Neospora caninum is a worldwide distributed pathogen which causes abortion in cattle leading to economic loss in the cattle industry. The aim of this study was to determine the seroprevalence of N. caninum antibodies in the native cattle slaughtered in various areas of Kurdistan province (western Iran) from September 2010 to September 2011. Serum samples from 368 cattle slaughtered in seven sla...

BACKGROUND The health system of Iraqi Kurdistan is severely understudied, particularly with regard to patient-physician interactions and their effects. We examine patterns of behaviour among physicians in Kurdistan, the justifications given and possible enabling factors, with a view to understanding accountability both from above and below. METHODS An ethnographic study was conducted in the S...

* Department of pharmaceutcal, College of Pharmacy, Hawler Medical University, Erbil, Iraq. Introduction Herbal medicine is a traditional or folk medicine practice based on the use of plants’ seeds, berries, roots, leaves, bark, flowers and plant extracts for medicinal purposes. Plants are important sources of medicine for thousands of years and are the most important source of life saving drug...

BACKGROUND The prevalence of cesarean sections is increasing globally; however, it can lead to significant increases in maternal and infant morbidity and mortality. This study aimed to determine the rates and trends of cesarean sections in Iraq. METHODS The cesarean section rates of all births and public and private hospital-based births were calculated from the data on births provided by the...

In 2010, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) asked the RAND Corporation to undertake four studies aimed at improving the economic and social development of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. RAND's work was intended to help the KRG expand access to high-quality education and health care, increase private-sector development and employment for the expanding labor force, and design a data-collectio...

BACKGROUND Relative to the amount of global attention and media coverage since the first and second Gulf Wars, very little has been published in the health services research literature regarding the state of health services in Iraq, and particularly on the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan. Building on findings from a field visit, this paper describes the state of health services in Kurdistan...

2Department of Veterinary Clinical Sciences, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Selangor, UPM Serdang-43400, Malaysia 3Department of Medical Laboratory Sciences, College of Health Sciences, Komar University of Science and Technology, ChaqChaq-Qularasisy, Kurdistan Region, Northern Iraq *Corresponding author: Heshu Sulaiman Rahman, Department of Veterinary Clinical Scienc...