Iraq Investigating Possible Bird Flu Death

By YAHYA BARZANJI

SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq – Iraq and the World Health Organization are investigating whether bird flu killed a 15-year-old girl who died in a region that is a stopover for migratory birds from Turkey, site of a recent outbreak of the disease, officials said Wednesday.

The teenager, who lived in Raniya, just north of a reservoir in Kurdistan, died after developing a severe lung infection. If she did have bird flu, it would be Iraq’s first reported case.

A bird flu outbreak in Iraq would be extremely difficult to control, given the government’s severe lack of resources, disorganization after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and the brutal insurgency. Kurdistan – the part of northern Iraq controlled by Kurds – at least has an infrastructure that functions relatively well and has not seen the worst of recent violence.

The girl’s family apparently kept chickens in their house, and some of those birds also died, said Dr. Abdul Jalil Naji. Raniya is about 60 miles south of the Turkish border and 15 miles west of Iran.

"There are suspicions that they died of bird flu, but it is not certain yet and is not proven by laboratory checks," said Naji, who leads the bird flu office of Iraq’s Health Ministry.

Four doctors from WHO took blood samples from the girl and some dead birds, said Dr. Nejim Aldeen Hassan, director of the Kurdistan Health Ministry. He said there was no confirmation the teenager died of bird flu.

At least 21 people in Turkey are known to have contracted the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu, and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization has warned it might already have spread to neighboring countries.

Kurdish officials have begun to burn and bury dead birds, as well as kill any migratory birds they capture, Kurdistan Health Minister Mohammed Khoshnow said.

Naji said experts from the Health Ministry and the Agriculture Ministry were headed to Sulaimaniyah, where the girl was taken before she died Tuesday. A health official in Sulaimaniyah, Sherko Abdellah, said an initial autopsy found no evidence of bird flu but blood samples were taken for testing.

Dick Thompson, spokesman at WHO headquarters in Geneva, said he had no details about the girl’s death or whether she had bird flu.

"That’s a rumor that we’ve been chasing, too, and we don’t have anything definitive yet," he said. "In all these outbreaks, we always hear a lot of rumors. That’s good because we’re likely to find all the cases, but it just takes time to sort them out."

Experts worry the virus could mutate into a form that would spread easily among humans, triggering a pandemic capable of killing millions.