RA Ministry of Health alarms: Bodies left unattended along the entire  Contact Line may become transmitting of  outbreaks and epidemics

ArmInfo. Large-scale hostilities undertaken by Azerbaijan along the entire Line of Contact between the Artsakh Republic and Azerbaijan have targeted civilian  settlements, infrastructure and caused many casualties and  destruction, which is fraught with many consequences, including the  risk of various infectious diseases, including especially dangerous  outbreaks and epidemics. This is stated in the official statement of  the Ministry of Health of Armenia.

In particular, the Ministry of Health warns: <Damage of water supply  and sewerage systems causes unfavorable sanitary conditions, makes it  impossible to carry out proper cleaning and disinfection activities,  creating favorable conditions for the development and spread of  infectious intestinal diseases (cholera, hepatitis A, dysentery,  etc.).

The war zone passes through the areas of natural outbreaks of  Zangezur-Karabakh and Pre-Araks plague, where both pathogens and  transmitters are present. The absence of preconditions of removal,  burial or exchange of the bodies of the victims, helps corpses to  become transmitting of infectious diseases or natural breeding ground  for insects, as well as favorable environment for feeding and  breeding wild animals, and infectious, including especially  dangerous, pathogens can remain viable in the environment for a long  time, which creates all the preconditions for outbreaks and  epidemics.

Military actions can contribute to the activation of outbreaks and  increase the risk of infectious diseases transmitted by rodents  (plague, tularemia, leptospirosis).  The high mortality and  infectivity of the plague makes it very conducive to causing mass  infections.

Pollution of the environment, the reproduction of rodents that spread  infectious diseases is a serious epidemic threat not only for areas  of direct hostilities, but also for countries in close proximity to  the conflict, particularly for the Islamic Republic of Iran, given  the short distance between countries, the presence of the Araks  River, which is considered to be the spread of the infection by water  route to the settlements near the Araks.

The military-political leadership of Azerbaijan bears full  responsibility in case of the outbreaks and epidemics during the  hostilities and post-war period, as it has been continuously  violating the requirements of the humanitarian ceasefire signed on  October 10 for the exchange of corpses.>  

To recall, Azerbaijan has already violated the ceasefire regime  twice, reached during the negotiations between the Foreign Ministries  of Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, which were announced for  humanitarian purposes (October 10 and October 18). Baku refuses to  mediate the International Committee of the Red Cross in the exchange  of bodies of killed soldiers and war prisoners, as stated in the  Moscow agreement on a humanitarian truce.