Girl’s death prompts tests
 NST, 19 Jan 2006

SULAIMANIYA (Iraq), Wed. --- Health officials in northern Iraq have sent samples to Jordan for testing for the bird flu virus H5N1 after a 14-year-old girl died here, officials said today.

Tijan Abdel-Qader died on arrival at the main hospital yesterday after falling ill 15 days earlier in her hometown of Raniya, in Kurdistan near the Turkish and Iranian borders, Kurdish regional Health Minister Mohammed Khashnow said.

“The doctors in Sulaimaniya suspected this might be a case (of bird flu)”, he said.

“They have sent samples to Amman and we will know the results next week”.

Raniya is near Lake Dukan which draws many migratory birds and where Iraqi officials had been taking measures to prevent domestic fowl from being infected.

“The rest of the family is in good health”, Khasnow added, saying the family was not in the poultry business.

An Iraqi Health Ministry spokesman confirmed the suspected case and a senior central government health officer in Baghdad confirmed a team had been dispatched to investigate. “We sent a team this morning to check it out”. “We’re expecting to hear from them this afternoon with an initial report”, said Abdul Jalil Hassan, the head of a government committee set up to monitor the threat.

“We are not aware of any other cases in Iraq”.

Raniya lies north of ake Dukan, about 20km west of the Iranian border, near the Iranian city of Piranshahr.

It is about 100km south o the Turkish border.

Hassan said measures had been taken around the lake to keep domestic poultry away from wild birds arriving along winter migration routes from the north.

In Zakho, an Iraqi Kurdish frontier city a few kilometers from the Turkish and Syrian borders, all poultry were being slaughtered and burned, officials said. --- Reuters.