Iraq Confirms Human Bird Flu Death

(CBS/AP)  Iraqi and U.N. health officials said Monday a 15-year-old girl who died this month was a victim of the deadly H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus, the first confirmed case of the disease in the Middle East.

Tests were under way to determine if the girl's uncle, who lived in the same house, also died of the virus. He died 10 days later after suffering the same symptoms, officials said.

Iraqi health authorities began killing domestic birds in northern Iraq, which borders Turkey, where at least 21 cases of the deadly virus have been detected. Turkey and Iraq also lie on a migratory path for numerous species of birds.

"We regretfully announce that the first case of bird flu has appeared in Iraq," Iraqi Health Minister Abdel Mutalib Mohammed told reporters in the Kurdistan city of Sulaimaniyah, 160 miles northeast of Baghdad.

Mohammed made the announcement after receiving results from the U.S. Navy Medical Research Unit laboratory in Egypt that conducted tests on the girl, who died Jan. 17.

"The results show the inflection with the deadly H5N1," he said. "We appeal to the World Health Organization to help us.'

In other recent developments:

A bird flu outbreak that killed four children in Turkey this month seems to have stabilized after authorities destroyed 1.5 million fowl to contain the virus, and no human cases have been reported since Jan. 18. But, a senior EU health official warned Friday that more Turkish cases of bird flu in humans are likely. "I would not at all be surprised if there were sporadic cases" of humans being infected by the H5N1 strain in Turkey, said Angus Nicoll, of the Stockholm-based European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.

Ukraine's health minister has warned that the country may face a bird flu pandemic in the spring when wild birds migrate through the territory of this former Soviet nation, Channel 5 television reported Sunday. "Ukraine is among the countries where a bird flu pandemic may occur in the spring when birds migrate," the TV network quoted Yuriy Polyachenko as saying in an interview late Saturday.

Cyprus was tightening controls to prevent bird flu on Sunday after tests on birds from the northern part of the island revealed they had died of the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus, a senior government official said Sunday. Ferdi Sabit, Prime minister of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, Soyer said on Sunday, "We have done everything we had to but I am not sure about the other side. I am calling them here openly to cooperate."

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