Doctors warn of shortage for bird flu treatment

Doctors in Sulaimaniyah in northern Iraq say they lack medicines to treat recently recorded cases of the H5N1 strain of avian influenza, or “bird flu.”

“We don’t have more than 30 pills left in our pharmacies to treat suspected cases, and each patient requires huge amounts of tablets for treatment to be effective,” said Tahseen Namiq, a senior official at the Kurdish Ministry of Health, who is overseeing emergency operations aimed at halting the spread of the virus.

According to the ministry, 13 other patients are now showing similar symptoms to a 15-year-old girl who died of the bird flu on 17 January in the northern town of Raniya.

Most of these are being kept in the main hospital of nearby Sulaimaniyah, some 380km north of the capital, Baghdad.

Two essential treatment drugs, oseltamivir (known as Tamiflu) and zanamivir (known as Relenza), used to reduce the severity and duration of illness caused by seasonal influenza, were in short supply in hospitals in Kurdistan, said Namiq.

The efficiency of the drugs depends on early administration, ideally within 48 hours of the appearance of symptoms, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). Belated treatment, however, can result in death.

“We don’t have treatment for more than four patients,” said Namiq. “And each of these will receive incomplete treatment due to the shortage.”

On 31 January, Iraq's central health ministry sent five ambulances to Sulaimaniyah governorate to help transfer suspected cases and medicines to hospitals.

“Within a couple days, we’ll receive a large quantity of medicine to treat early cases,” Kadham Abbas, a senior official in the Iraqi central health ministry, said.

A WHO spokesperson in Geneva, Marie Cheng, said that a specialised team in epidemiology was scheduled to reach Iraq by 3 February.

The European Commission announced on 31 January that it was also sending a team from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control to investigate cases and possible routes of infection.

Minister of Health in northern Iraq, Mohammed Khashnow, said that prevention campaigns would begin in late February on all five Iraqi television channels.

The public awareness drive will aim to explain the health risks associated with avian influenza and urge farmers in affected areas to kill their chickens as well as migratory birds, he said.

Meanwhile, the health ministry is advising people to report suspected cases to health authorities as early as possible, especially if a patient develops respiratory problems.

Direct contact with infected poultry, or objects contaminated by their faeces, is presently considered the primary route of human infection, according to the WHO. To date, most human cases have occurred in rural areas where many households keep poultry.

With help from the local municipality and the Kurdistan Ministry of Health, local health officials are now undertaking a house-to-house awareness campaign to inform people of health risks and help them dispose of dead fowl.

Half a million birds have reportedly been killed so far by the municipalities of Sulaimaniyah and Arbil.