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The World Health Organization has issued a warning regarding a viral "nose-bleed" infection transmitted by ticks that has already killed 18 people as it continues to spread.
The virus, formerly known as Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, has been detected among 120 people and already killed at least 18 so far in Iraq since January, British newspaper Metro reports.
The disease is hosted in ticks, which leads to it becoming widespread among people who work with livestock or in slaughterhouses where animal blood has become infected and causes both internal and external bleeding that is rapid and severe.
The WHO warned of several main symptoms associated with the virus including profuse bleeding, fever, body aches, dizziness, neck pain, headache and sore eyes.
Several other symptoms such as sore throat, diarrhea, nausea and vomiting, have also been linked to patients infected with the virus.
Iraq president Mustafa al-Kadimi has invested $1 billion toward an effort to spray livestock farms with pesticide in order to kill the ticks that have spread the virus among animals.
Additionally, veterinary clinics have been issued with pesticides and people are advised to only buy meat from licensed suppliers amid the spread of the virus.
Ahmed Zouiten, WHO's representative in Iraq, claims the ongoing spread may be linked to the country's failure to successfully run pesticide-spraying campaigns in 2020 in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
"We have not yet reached the stage of an epidemic, but the infections are higher than last year," Zouiten said via Metro. "The procedures adopted by the different authorities are not up to par, particularly with regards to unregulated slaughters."