Kurdish humanitarian Dr. Nemam Ghafouri dies from Covid-19 in Sweden

The Iraqi-born Kurdish cardiothoracic surgeon died in Sweden, where she sought refugee as a child after her father fought with the Peshmerga against Saddam Hussein.

Ghafouri practised medicine on five continents before moving back to Iraq's Kurdistan autonomous region, where she founded a charity to aid the victims of the Yazidi genocide.

Around 4,000 members of the ethnoreligious group were killed when the Islamic State [IS] group assaulted their native Sinjar.

Some 500,000 were displaced and thousands more Yazidi women and girls were forced into sexual slavery.

Ghafouri supported survivors of the brutal assault in both Syria and Iraq.

She was a "sister or all the people in need and displaced individuals in the four parts of Kurdistan", her sister Nazdar told Kurdistan 24.

"She did not have [her own] kids, but thousands of kids cry for her now as if they have lost their mother," she said, describing her sister as "selfless".

Ghafouri was "born in the mountains during the war", she said in a 2015 interview, "so I know what it's like to be a refugee".

"That is why I know how to help refugees now," the doctor said.

Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to stay connected