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ERBIL,
Kurdistan-Iraq, Feb 6 - Iraq was treating six
patients from the same part of Kurdistan (northern
Iraq) for suspected bird flu on Monday as
international experts began to help the war-ravaged
country fight the virus.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) team arrived in
the country at the weekend, after laboratory tests
last week confirmed that an Iraqi teenage girl who
died last month had H5N1 avian influenza, raising
fears that the virus had spread from neighbouring
Turkey.
Iraqi medical officials, already overwhelmed by
victims of bombings and shootings, would be
stretched to combat bird flu if it spreads beyond an
area in the north near Sulaimaniyah.
The girl's uncle also died and a WHO laboratory in
London is testing samples to see if bird flu killed
him. Tests are also being carried out on samples
from a 54-year-old woman with respiratory problems
who is being treated in northern Iraq.
There are five other people whose clinical condition
gives grounds for suspecting that they could have
the disease, although they have not been seen by the
WHO team on the ground in northern Iraq, WHO
spokesman Dick Thompson said.
Iraqi medical officials stress the virus has not
spread.
The High Committee to Fight Bird Flu in the Council
of Ministers said on Monday that the epidemic is
still confined to Serkikan village, Raniya district
in Sulaimaniyah Province, on the Iranian-Turkey
borders.
Bird flu killed four children in Turkey last month,
but the outbreak there has been brought under
control. There are fears that insurgent violence in
Iraq and a ruined infrastructure will make it much
harder to control the virus.
HAMPERED BY VIOLENCE, POOR INFRASTRUCTURE
"The government must close the poultry factory near
Sulaimaniyah," said Khalid Mustafa, 34, a theatre
actor. "We are afraid the problem is huge. We have a
weak government which cannot face crises much less
dangerous than bird flu."
WHO country representative Naeema al-Gasseer told a
media briefing in Erbil, the capital of Iraq's
largely autonomous Kurdistan region, that local
health officials were confident the virus had not
spread from the dead girl's village, Serkikan.
Kurdistan's health minister, Mohammed Kashnow, had
said on Sunday that four suspected cases were being
treated in a hospital in Sulaimaniyah.
Jamal Abdul Hamid, the health minister in Erbil,
said that any suspected bird flu victim would be
treated immediately before any blood test material
arrives from abroad.
The WHO team will visit hospitals and homes of
suspected bird flu victims during a 10-day trip in
Iraq.
Iraq has reported an outbreak of bird flu in poultry
in two villages in the Raniya district, the World
Animal Health Organisation (OIE) reported on Monday.
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 more than 80 people around the
world since it reemerged 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.
Reuters
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