Iraqi authorities go on bird flu alert (5 mobile hospitals, 20-mile security cordon)

Irish Times ^ | 1-31-06

[Mother Abigail]

Iraqi health authorities go on bird flu alert

Health authorities went on high alert today following Iraq's first reported case of the deadly bird flu virus, warning farmers across the country to inspect their domestic and commercial birds.

Five mobile hospitals with special equipment were due to arrive in northern Iraq later today, according to Health Minister Abdel Mutalib Mohammed.

A 20-mile security cordon will be placed around the village where the disease appeared, he added. The measures follow yesterday's announcement that a 15-year-old girl from northern Iraq who died on January 17 had contracted the deadly H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus.

That was the first confirmed human case of the H5N1 in the Middle East and prompted the slaughter of thousands of domestic birds in Iraq's northern Kurdish region.

The US has offered assistance to Iraqi authorities, while a World Health Organisation team was expected to arrive later in the week to start tests. WHO spokesman Dick Thompson said health authorities are also investigating two more possible bird flu cases.

[Mother Abigail]

Iraq says treating 12 possible human bird flu cases

SULAIMANIYA, Iraq, Jan 31

Officials in northern
Iraq said on Tuesday they were treating 12 patients suspected of having bird flu as a World Health Organisation (WHO) team prepared to travel to the area to give urgent assistance.

Iraq's health minister said on Monday the country may have its first human bird flu victim after preliminary test results showed a 14-year-old Iraqi girl who died two weeks ago had the H5N1 virus.

WHO said it was urgently seeking further tests at a British laboratory to confirm the diagnosis and was dispatching a team of experts to help local health officials in Iraq's largely autonomous northern region of Kurdistan.

The British laboratory will also assess samples from the girl's uncle, who had cared for her when she was ill and who himself died last week of a respiratory infection.

"We have 12 patients in Sulaimaniya that have lung infections that we suspect may be the bird flu virus," Kurdistan's deputy prime minister, Imad Ahmed, told Reuters, referring to one of the region's largest cities.
The most serious was 54-year-old Mariam Qader, who came from the same village as the dead girl and is believed to be a distant relative of the victim.

The village is close to Iraq's border with Turkey, where four children died from bird flu in recent weeks.

The head of a Kurdistan committee set up to fight bird flu said all birds in areas around Sulaimaniya were being culled. "They number in the region of 500,000," Tahsin Namiq said.

The WHO team, composed of four experts in epidemiology and infection control, will leave on Wednesday for Jordan and should reach northern Iraq by the end of the week, WHO spokesman Dick Thompson told Reuters.

"The purpose of the mission is to assess the situation on the ground. Experts from the (U.N.) Food and Agriculture Organisation may also be joining the team," he added.

NO CASES IN POULTRY

So far there have been no confirmed cases among poultry in Iraq, but local officials say the country's porous frontiers, a raging insurgency and general chaos in the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion will make it hard to control any epidemic.

The virulent virus has killed at least 85 people since late 2003, mainly in five countries of Asia where the virus emerged.

Initially, the Geneva-based WHO had discounted the virus as the cause of the death of the Iraqi girl, Tijan Abdel-Qader, but a WHO official said on Monday that preliminary results from a U.S. Navy laboratory in Cairo showed the H5N1 virus.

"We don't have positive confirmation of H5N1 in the girl yet. The laboratory samples should have reached the UK this morning," Thompson said.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/COL138885.htm 

[Mother Abigail]

Khaleej Times Online

Iraqi Kurdistan faces acute shortage of bird flu drug

31 January 2006

SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq - Iraq's Kurdistan region, which has confirmed its first human death from bird flu is facing an acute shortage of the vital drug to fight the disease, a medical official said Tuesday.

"We are suffering from a lack of medicine to combat the virus," Tahseen Nameq, head of a joint Kurdish committee set up to combat the disease, told AFP.

"We have received only 50 pills of Tamiflu," he said. A single course of medicine per patient consists of two pills a day for five days, giving the whole Kurdish region in northern Iraq enough medicine for five cases.

Kurdistan has quarantined 14 people suspected of suffering from bird flu, but officials say only one case is truly suspected to be the H5N1 deadly strain. Nameq said they have approached Baghdad for immediate aid.

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/focusoniraq/2006/January/focusoniraq_January139.xml&section=focusoniraq

[IonInsights]

but local officials say the [...] a raging insurgency and general chaos in the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion

Did the officials really say this or did the reporter interject this?

[auto power]

Pray for our troops and the good people of Iraq.

[wizardoz]

For the second time, please take me off your bird-flu bump list.

[Mother Abigail]

My apologies,

I had removed you from my original list, but you are showing up on the new combined list.

Sorry for the interruption.

MA

[Mother Abigail]

I will go thru the combined ping list today and look for any others that have been deleted from my own list.

I hope that no one else has been included that should not be.

MA

[Oorang]

Thank you for the ping.

[little jeremiah]

Thanks for the ping, and also for your answer yesterday on why the WHO obfuscates numbers. I've got to go read that again.

[little jeremiah]

Just in case you're not on M.A.'s ping list.

[Gritty]

Please add me to your list.

[Termite_Commander]

Thanks for the ping.

I wonder if we still have MOPP suits over there for our troops.

[EternalHope]

Thanks for the ping.

And don't let the ignorant ostrich types get you down.

It's easy to spot the most ignorant ones. They usually start with some comment about how few people have died, and end by heaping scorn on "the sky is falling" "chicken little" types.

They're the same ones who will want to know why the government was not more prepared when/if H5N1 achieves efficient and stable H2H transmission. They'll probably also wonder why we don't already have an effective vaccine, and why there isn't a pill they can take to protect themselves.

If H5N1 never achieves efficient H2H transmission, these self-appointed hecklers will, of course, heap even more scorn on those who worked to be ready if it did.

[blam]

"I wonder if we still have MOPP suits over there for our troops."

More likely than not.

[Mother Abigail]

You are kind with your support.

I am very old and time and sorrow have taught me;

That the truth is worth telling

And be careful what you throw away.

MA

[TaxRelief]

It's all about the vaccines, isn't it? Someone's gonna make a lot of money scaring people into getting vaccinated.

I wonder which biomedical company I should buy stock in to capitalize on the fear of H2H transmission of H5N1?

Actually, I'll probably make more money buying stock in Purell Hand Sanitizer for when WHO figures out that washing hands and sanitizing is the best way to stop all diseases from spreading.