Iraq on alert after 15-year-old girl dies from bird flu virus

SULAIMINYAH, Iraq -- Health authorities went on high alert Tuesday following Iraq's first reported case of the deadly bird flu virus, killing hundreds of thousands of birds and warning farmers across the country to inspect their flocks.\nFive mobile hospitals with special equipment were due to arrive in northern Iraq later Tuesday, according to Health Minister Abdel Mutalib Mohammed. A 20-mile security cordon will be placed around the village where the disease appeared, he added.\nThe measures followed Monday's announcement that a 15-year-old girl from northern Iraq who died Jan. 17 had contracted the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu. It was the first confirmed human case of H5N1 in the country.\nThe prospect of a bird flu outbreak in Iraq is alarming because it is gripped by armed insurgency and lacks the resources of other governments in the region. Government institutions, however, are most effective in the Kurdish-run area where the girl lived.\nThe United States has offered assistance to Iraqi authorities to help deal with the outbreak, while a World Health Organization team of epidemiologists and clinicians was expected to arrive later in the week to start tests.\n"We are working with the government of Iraq and the World Health Organization to ensure that the necessary support for diagnosis and treatment of avian influenza is available as needed," U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Sylvia Blackwood said.\nWHO spokesman Dick Thompson said health authorities are also investigating two more possible bird flu cases -- the girl's uncle who died Jan. 27 and a 54-year-old woman from the same region who has been hospitalized.\nIraqi authorities believe the girl most likely contracted the disease from migratory birds that passed it onto domestic birds in her hometown of Raniya, U.S. Embassy health attache Jon Bowersox said.\nRaniya is just north of a reservoir that is a stopover for migratory birds from bordering Turkey heading south through Iraq's southern marshlands, onto Kuwait and further to South Africa, Bowersox said. At least 21 cases of bird flu have been recorded in Turkey, raising fears the virus may have moved south.\nThe disease has not proved as deadly in Turkey as in East Asia -- where more than half of those infected have died -- but U.N. experts warned that does not mean the virus was becoming less dangerous.\nExperts fear the virus could mutate into a form spread easily among humans, triggering a pandemic capable of killing millions. A total of 85 people had died of the disease worldwide before the Iraq case was reported, according to WHO figures.\nBowersox said detecting sick and dying birds and their actual culling will be among the most difficult tasks faced by Iraqi authorities.\nMore than half a million domestic birds have been killed so far by about 50 health teams working throughout northern Iraq, said Agricultural Ministry official Tahsin Namiq.\nHowever, the announcement of H5N1's arrival appeared to cause little concern among many Iraqis hardened by years of death and war. Many people simply didn't believe the reports.\n"We will go on eating chickens. There is no bird flu in Iraq. Such news is false," said Salah Abdul-Hussein, a poultry dealer in Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood.\nBut some reacted quickly to the report by doing their own culling.\n"When I heard about bird flu being found in Iraq I hurried to the veterinarian who came to my home and we both burnt my pigeons," said Haitham Saham, a coffee shop owner who has been breeding birds since 1995 in Sadr City.\nFollowing Monday's announcement, health officials started implementing measures to combat any spread of the outbreak.\nFarmers killed thousands of chickens and ducks in Sarkathan, a village about four miles north of Raniya, the town where the teenage victim, Shangen Abdul Qader, lived. Culling teams continued working Tuesday in villages about 12 miles west of Raniya.