Iraq tests for bird flu after girl dies in north
By Twana Osman
The Star, 19 Jan 2006

SULAIMANIYA, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraq was testing for the human strain of the deadly bird flu virus for the first time on Wednesday after a 14-year-old girl died of a fever in the Kurdish region close to the Turkish and Iranian borders. 

Health officials said Tijan Abdel-Qader, who died on Tuesday after a two-week illness, lived close to a lake that is a haven for migratory birds flying south from Turkey, where 21 people have been confirmed this month as having the H5N1 virus. 

"We are not aware of any other cases in Iraq," said Abdul Jalil Hassan, the Health Ministry doctor coordinating a crisis team set up to monitor the threat from across the borders. 

Preliminary tests by a team dispatched to the northern city of Sulaimaniya from Baghdad would be carried out on Wednesday. Other tests were being conducted in the Jordanian capital Amman. 

Hassan has warned that the rebel violence and anarchy that have impoverished Iraq, leaving its frontiers porous and sanitary regulations unenforceable, would make it very difficult for Baghdad to control any epidemic among wildfowl and poultry. 

But it has been preparing measures since October and banned poultry imports from Turkey earlier this month. 

In Zakho, a frontier city a few kilometres from the Turkish and Syrian borders, all poultry was being slaughtered and burned, a Kurdish regional government official said. 

The teenager, Teijan Abdul Qader, died on arrival at the main hospital in Sulaimaniya after being brought in from her home in a village near Raniya, in Kurdistan close to 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 told Reuters. "They have sent samples to Amman and we will know the results next week." 

Akram Abdul Qader, Teijan's teenaged brother, told Reuters that a local doctor had said she was suffering from a severe lung infection. 

"After some tests, she was kept in the hospital for few days, but she did not get better, so we took her to Sulaimaniya. She died on the way there," he said. 

MIGRATORY THREAT  Raniya is close to Lake Dukan, which draws many migratory birds to the region and where Iraqi officials had been taking measures to try to prevent domestic fowl from being infected. 

 

"The rest of the family is in good health," Khashnow added, saying the family was not in the poultry business. 

An Iraqi Health Ministry spokesman said the suspected case was the first such incident involving a human death in Iraq. 

Raniya lies north of Lake Dukan, about 20 km (12 miles) west of the Iranian border, near the Iranian city of Piranshahr. It is about 100 km (60 miles) south of the Turkish border. 

Iraq has been trying to secure porous borders with its neighbors, particularly Syria, since 2003 to stop the flow of foreign insurgents but with little success. Tribes living along border areas also make a living from smuggling goods. 

Health officials say they need both money and expertise. 

Iraqi authorities say they also have no complete records of slaughterhouses in Iraq, making their job of monitoring any outbreak even more difficult. 

The H5N1 virus has been found in wild birds and poultry across Turkey, where four or five children have died. So far, H5N1 has killed just under half of 150 or so people it has infected worldwide, but the mortality rate in Turkey appears to be lower. 

(Additional reporting by Mariam Karouny and Alastair Macdonald in Baghdad)