Dead Boy in Southern Iraq may be Bird Flu Victim
Date: 08-Feb-06
Country: IRAQ
Author: Salaheddin Rasheed
The boy from the Amara area in the south, developed symptoms on Feb 1, was taken to hospital with severe pneumonia on Feb. 5 and died the same day, the WHO said, adding the case had been reported to it by Iraq's Ministry of Health.
Iraq has one confirmed death from bird flu, a teenage girl from the north of the country, who died last month. Her uncle, who lived in the same area, also died and tests are being carried out to establish if the virus killed him.
"There is one confirmed case, the girl, and three suspect cases under investigation who have died. They include her uncle, the boy in the south and another case," WHO spokeswoman Maria Cheng told Reuters in Geneva. She gave no further details.
If the death of the boy in the south is confirmed as bird flu it would dash hopes that the deadly H5N1 virus was confined to a small area in the north of the war-ravaged country.
"Although no poultry deaths have been reported in the area, pet birds kept by the family are said to have died near the time of symptom onset," the WHO said of the boy's case.
There are fears that insurgent violence in Iraq and a ruined infrastructure will make it much harder to halt the spread of the virus than in countries like neighbouring Turkey.
Bird flu killed four children in eastern Turkey last month, but the outbreak there now seems to be under control.
People contract avian flu through direct contact with infected or sick poultry.
Bird flu has killed at least 88 people around the world since it re-emerged in late 2003. There are fears the virus could mutate into a form that passes easily from person to person, sparking a pandemic in which millions could die.
POULTRY CULL
The WHO, which has experts on the ground in northern Iraq, said confirmed outbreaks of H5N1 had been reported in poultry in the area last week.
Wearing plastic overalls, surgical masks and gloves, culling teams went from house to house in villages in the Kurdish north, chasing chickens, ducks, geese and turkeys around backyards and stuffing them into bags as villagers looked on.
"I am very scared. If this disease spreads widely I don't believe the Kurdistan government can fight it with its humble ability. Until now the government and health authorities are talking and not acting," said Hawaree Yaseen, 32, a lawyer.
Seven patients suspected of having bird flu are being treated in hospital in the north, the WHO said.
It added that government officials had requested emergency supplies including antiviral drugs and these had begun to arrive in the country.
Preliminary tests in Iraq on the girl's uncle, who also died last month, indicate the virus killed him too, but the WHO has yet to corroborate the finding.
John Jabbour, a medical officer for the WHO in Egypt, said a sample from the girl's uncle would be sent to Egypt where definitive tests for H5N1 avian influenza would be carried out. Egypt is the regional centre for influenza testing.
"They have tested this (sample from the uncle) in the Iraq laboratory and they found it positive for H5N1," Jabbour told Reuters in Cairo.
"... We do not confirm that it is H5N1 until it is confirmed in our reference laboratory (in Egypt)," he said.
The WHO said it had run into difficulties transporting patient samples for diagnosis. Ways to strengthen local testing were being explored, along with measures to speed up the shipment of samples to WHO reference laboratories.
(Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Edmund Blair in Cairo and Twana Osman in Sulaimaniya)
