Iraq culls poultry as new bird flu cases feared

SULAIMANIYA, Iraq - Culling teams moved through villages in northern Iraq today as the war-ravaged country sought to contain an outbreak of bird flu that has killed a teenage girl and is being blamed for her uncle's death.

Six patients suspected of having bird flu are being treated in hospital, health officials said. A World Health Organisation (WHO) team is in Iraq to provided expertise to hospitals in dealing with such cases.

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, a WHO official in Egypt said.

Wearing plastic overalls, surgical masks and gloves, the 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.

Laboratory tests last week confirmed that the girl who died on January 17 had H5N1 avian influenza after a deadly outbreak killed four children in neighbouring Turkey.

The situation in Turkey has been brought largely under control. However, there are fears that insurgent violence in Iraq and a ruined infrastructure will make it much harder to control the virus.

"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.

People contract avian flu through direct contact with infected or sick poultry. In northern Iraq, there were no confirmed reports of sick birds before the human cases, prompting concerns that the virus was spreading undetected.

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.

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.

Iraqi health officials said the outbreak is confined to Serkikan village, in the Raniya district in Sulaimaniya Province, on the Iranian-Turkey borders. But the culling teams have been through other areas.

One worker climbed on to the roof of a hut to try and catch a bird but it flew away. In a deserted area, workers loaded sacks containing the birds on to trucks or burned piles of fowl.

Seemingly oblivious to the dangers of handling birds which could have the virus, one villager sliced the head off of a rooster as his sons held others.
- REUTERS