Iraq tests for bird flu after death of girl, 14

IRAQ was yesterday investigating if a 14-year-old girl who died of a fever had contracted the human strain of the bird flu virus, while Turkey and China also reported new deaths from the deadly disease.

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 co-ordinating a crisis team set up to monitor the threat from across the borders.

Mr Hassan has warned that the rebel violence and anarchy that have impoverished the country, 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.

The dead teenager died on arrival at the main hospital in Sulaimaniya after being brought in from her home in Raniya, Kurdistan, close to the Turkish and Iranian borders, Kurdish regional health minister Mohammed Khashnow said.

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.

A Chinese woman has died from bird flu in south-west China, the health ministry said yesterday, in what would be the country's sixth human death from the virus if confirmed.

The 35-year-old woman surnamed Wei died in the Sichuan province on January 11.

The woman - a poultry slaughterer - lived in a village where domestic birds had died, the statement said, though it did not say if they had succumbed to the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus to which the victim tested positive.

An 11-year-old Turkish girl died yesterday of suspected bird flu, the state-run Anatolian news agency said, citing a senior hospital official.

If confirmed, it would bring the number of people who have died from the deadly H5N1 virus in Turkey to five over the past two weeks.

Sevgi Acar died on the way to a hospital in the eastern Turkish city of Erzurum. She came from the province of Mus.

Tissue samples had been sent to a World Health Organisation approved laboratory in Ankara, Ataturk University hospital chief Dr Akin Aktas told the Anatolian news agency.

Mr Aktas said doctors were monitoring another child from Dogubayazit who tested positive for H5N1 on Tuesday, bringing the number of positive cases in Turkey to 21, including four confirmed deaths.