Kurds Guard Against Bird Flu After Suspect Death

Fears are running high as over the mountains to the north lies Turkey, the only country outside the Far East where the H5N1 virus has killed people, claiming five lives out of 21 cases.

Health officials in the northern city of Suleimaniyah Wednesday suggested the girl, Tijan Abdel Qader, who died Tuesday, was a victim of pneumonia rather than flu, but added they had sent samples to Jordan for testing to be absolutely certain.

"After she died, we did another test and we didn't find any bird flu," said Tahseen Nameq, deputy to the chief agricultural official of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the party administering the city.

Qader who came from the town of Raniya, not far from the Turkish and Iranian borders, exhibited flu-like symptoms for about a fortnight, although the rest of her family remained healty and tests for avian flu proved negative.

"We are afraid and in a state of high alert in the face of what could be a time bomb," said Azad Ezzeddin Mulla Afandi, the chief agricultural official for the Kurdish Democratic Party, the other entity running the northern provinces.

"Despite all the precautions we have taken, we are terrified that the disease will appear here," he said.

The toll from the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has climbed to 78 people worldwide.

Imports of poultry from Turkey were banned in October, while trade in live chickens in Kurdistan itself was outlawed last week.

"Strict orders were given to poultry farmers to install basins at the gates of their farms to decontaminate vehicules going in and out," said Afandi.

He said these measures are being carried out not just in the provinces of Arbil and Dohuk, which are under KDP control, but also in Suleimaniyah, the Kurdish rival run by the KDP's sometime rival, the PUK.

The two provinces, which are close to the parts of Turkey that have reported cases of avian flu, are also major producers of eggs and poultry, supplying much of the Iraqi market.

"The virus ignores borders," said Saman Halbaji, spokesman for the KDP's health department. "The disease could arrive with migratory birds, but fortunately so far not a single case has been detected" in Iraqi Kurdistan.

At a wintry frontier post, Kurdish border guards are careful to decontaminate trucks that trundle across the border carrying Turkish goods.

Dr Abdel Khaleq Abdel Sattar, the frontier post's veterinarian, supervises the minute inspection of each vehicle and its cargo to make sure no birds are transported into the country.

"We are doing everything in our power to prevent the spread of the virus into Kurdistan," he said.

Authorities have mobilized the media in a public awareness campaign in their fight against bird flu that uses television, radio and newspapers.

The message is simple and oft-repeated: in case of avian flu symptoms, such as the onset of fever, chills and wracking coughs, report to local health centers.

Housewives receive instructions of their own in radio and television messages, and are told to cook chicken on a high heat of at least 80 degrees Celsius (176 degrees Fahrenheit) before eating and to wash any eggs (as well as one's hands) with soap, according to World Health Organization guidelines.

The awareness campaign appears to be succeeding but the fear of the flu is palpable among the people, some of whom don't think authorities are doing enough to prevent an outbreak.

"The measures being taken are not enough and we are afraid the disease is going to break out," said Salima Ali, a 39-year-old Arbil housewife.

In Arbil, shops selling live chickens have been closed and shopkeepers have started complaining about a drop in demand for chickens and eggs.

Officials from the KDP and the PUK have formed a coordination committee for avian flu with the eventual goal of creating a single executive body for the whole northern autonomous region.