Bird flu claims two more lives and spreads to Azerbaijan

HEALTH authorities in China and Indonesia each reported a woman killed by a deadly strain of bird flu, and the virus has spread to another new country, Azerbaijan.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said it hoped a major anti-polio campaign being launched in Nigeria could help battle bird flu there.

The WHO said anti-polio workers going door-to-door to immunise children in Nigeria could watch for unexplained deaths from pneumonia, a possible sign that someone has bird flu.

Sona Bari, a WHO spokeswoman, said the details of what the polio immunisation staff would do in the campaign against bird flu were still being decided by the Nigerian government, but at least 140 members of the team would be in the northern Nigerian states that have been affected.

Nigeria on Wednesday reported the first known bird flu outbreak in Africa among fowl. No human infections have been reported.

European lab results, meanwhile, confirmed that bird flu has killed fowl in a new country - Azerbaijan.

The virus was found in wild birds floating dead off its coast. The birds were found in the Caspian Sea near the Absheron peninsula, which includes the capital Baku, and off the southern Massaly region, near the border with Iran, said Emin Shakhbazov, deputy head of the country’s veterinary service.

The latest death in China was a 20-year-old female farmer from the county of Suining in the southern province of Hunan, the Health Ministry said. It identified her only by the surname Long and said she had handled poultry.

Long fell ill on January 27 and died on February 4, the ministry said. It said laboratory tests confirmed she had the virulent H5N1 flu strain and the results were reported to the WHO.

Long would be China’s eighth bird flu death. On Wednesday, China reported a 26-year-old woman died of the H5N1 strain in an area with no reported outbreaks in poultry.

In Indonesia, officials citing local lab results said a woman from West Java province died of bird flu. The 23-year-old from Bekasi, a town just east of Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, died overnight after five days at the Sulianti Saroso Hospital.

The WHO says 88 people have died from bird flu since 2003. Almost all the deaths have been linked to contact with infected poultry, but experts fear the virus could mutate into a form that can spread from human to human, sparking a pandemic in which millions could die.