Iraqi Kurdistan faces acute shortage of bird flu drug 31.1.2006

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Tuesday it was sending a team of five specialists to northern Iraq to investigate the situation. The group is expected to arrive in Kurdistan by the end of the week.

"A medical team from Amman will arrive in Arbil and Sulaimaniyah this week followed by a team of epidemiologists and clinicians next week to study the issue and to provide more medicines," said Sirwan Nuraddin, a senior health official.

The European Union said it will send a senior health expert to Iraq to help it deal with the disease.

The disease outbreak inspector, Denis Coulombier, will travel to Iraq as part of an international team assembled by the WHO.

The team "will assist the Iraqi authorities in assessing possible infection routes of the 15-year-old girl, and also help assess two other cases that are being investigated as possible human cases of avian influenza," the European Commission said.

Iraqi Kurdistan has quarantined 14 people suspected of suffering from bird flu, but officials say that other than the fatality, only one case is suspected to be the H5N1 deadly strain.

Agriculture Minister Ali al-Bahadli said Monday that the government was equipped to confront the crisis.

"We have a lot of capacity to confront the disease and have antiseptic and medical equipment to prevent people from being infected by bird flu and we have sources from where we can obtain more," he said.

An emergency plan was ready for implementation in any region of Iraq to avoid the spread of the disease, he said.

Tahseen Nameq, head of the joint Kurdish committee set up to combat the dieseas, said a massive programme has been launched to cull birds in Kurdistan, in border regions north of Sulaimaniyah near Lake Dukan, in Raniya and also north of Arbil.

"So far we have killed 500,000 birds. In some of these areas we have killed 50 percent of all birds and in others only 30 percent," Nameq said.

Shamal Abdel Wafa, the head of the Kurdish agriculture department, said at the press conference that 100 teams began work three days ago to cull all birds in designated areas.

Iraq on Monday said a teenage girl from Raniya region who died earlier this month had succumbed to H5N1 despite initial reports from a WHO laboratory in Amman saying test results for the virus were negative.

Mohammed Khushnow, a senior health official in Sulaimaniyah, said on Monday there were 14 cases of suspected bird flu in the region.

The dead girl's uncle died last week after suffering a pulmonary infection and samples are being tested in Amman.

The main suspected case left is 54-year-old Mariam Qadar, who hails from the same region as the two fatalities and was taken to hospital in Sulaimaniyah by her family last Wednesday.

Turkey, which has had 21 cases of the flu, was previously the only country outside Asia to report fatalities from the virus. Four people have died there.

AFP  

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