New suspected bird flu infection cases being tested in Iraq

The Ministry of Health has said it is testing 13 new suspected human cases of the H5N1 virus, known as bird flu, in the southern governorate of Missan and 12 in Sulaimaniyah in northern Iraq. “We’re testing blood samples from 25 locals from the Missan and Sulaimaniyah governorates because they’ve been showing symptoms very similar to those of bird flu,” said Ibtissam Azize, a spokesman for the bird flu programme at the health ministry. The blood samples are being analysed in local government laboratories and results are expected before 21 February. Ten samples have also been sent for simultaneous testing to a World Health Organisation (WHO) laboratory in Cairo, while the remaining 15 are to be transported by the end of the week. Meanwhile, on 17 February, the WHO announced that a second case of human infection in the northern province of Sulaimaniyah had been confirmed by a US Naval Medical Research Unit based in Cairo, Egypt. The victim was the uncle of a 15-year-old girl who died from the virus on 17 January, and who cared for her during her illness. The 39-year-old man had a documented history of exposure to infected domestic birds, according to the WHO website. He had developed symptoms of the virus on 18 January and died on 27 January. Another 14 suspected cases have been confirmed negative by the laboratory in Cairo, according to Maria Cheng, spokesperson for the WHO, in Geneva. Since the confirmation of the first case, the Ministry of Agriculture has culled more than one and a half million chickens and ducks in Iraq, especially in areas close to the village of Raniyah, near the Turkish border, where the two human infections occurred. The government has said it will compensate all farmers whose poultry is killed. “We have informed farmers in northern and southern areas that we are going to compensate their losses from culling,” Sami Ruba’ai, a senior official in the Ministry of Agriculture, said. Ruba’ai added that on 21 February information on compensation packages would be released by the ministry after the national assembly released details on available budgets. Funding for compensation will be allocated to the Ministry of Agriculture and for prevention to the Ministry of Health. “The most probable [scenario] is that we pay farmers the local price that is being obtained for domestic chickens in markets, but the confirmation for that will come on Tuesday,” Ruba’ai noted. Some farmers, especially in Kurdistan, were resisting culling measures, he added. “There are many very simple people who do not understand that it is an emergency situation and want to keep their animals at any price. But if the animal is infected, the final results will be the contamination of all members of their family,” he warned. Nearly 500 people are now working on the campaign against bird flu in Iraq, including doctors in hospitals where suspected cases are being treated, according to Ministry of Health officials. “We were not expecting a crisis like this one, and we’ll have to dislocate budgets from other sectors for the prevention campaigns because it’s an emergency situation,” Azize explained.