A page on Facebook recently published a statistic using the name of a female doctor, claiming that 900 cancer patients were registered at Hiwa Hospital within eight hours.
“The news published in the name of a doctor on several pages and websites regarding cancer data and statistics are all false, and we deny them,” Dr. Yad Naqishbandi, the director of the hospital, told Rudaw.
“They have no connection to Hiwa Hospital, and the statistics have no scientific basis,” he added.
A Rudaw investigation concluded that the Facebook page used the name of the female doctor to publish the fake statistics, and has no connection to the doctor.
Naqishbandi noted that the doctor also has no connection with the hospital, stating that they “only publish statistics directly through the Sulaimani General Health Directorate and the official Hiwa Hospital website.”
Hiwa Hospital is the only hospital in Sulaimani province for the treatment of cancer. Patients from all over Iraq, as well as Kurds from Syria, Turkey, and Iran, visit the hospital.
According to the statistics obtained by Rudaw, 9,911 new cancer cases were recorded across the Kurdistan Region in 2023. There were 9,061 cases in 2022, 7,904 cases in 2021, and 6,293 cases in 2020.
