Avian Flu In Iraq

Lord Jeebus. This is all we need! Granted this is northern Iraq but if it made it there, it can creep into other areas and, possibly, throughout the country.

A 15-year-old Iraqi girl has died of the H5N1 bird flu virus, Iraqi and international health officials confirmed Monday, indicating the arrival of disease in yet another country - one that, in its current war-torn state, may be ill prepared to control spread of the disease.

More alarming still, officials said, the finding suggests that the disease may be spreading widely - and undetected - among birds in countries of Central Asia that are poorly equipped to pick up or report infections. Bird flu has never been reported in animals in Iraq.

As in Turkey earlier this month, the spread of bird flu to a new part of the world was heralded by a human death, a death that was most likely avoidable. Bird flu only rarely infects humans, late in the course of an animal outbreak, and then only after intense contact with sick birds.

'We shouldn't be seeing human cases first, and this points to serious gaps in surveillance,' said Maria Cheng, a spokeswoman for the World Health Organization in Geneva. 'But given the situation in Turkey, I don't think we'd be surprised to see isolated humans cases in surrounding areas.'

The girl, Shengeen Abdul Qadr, died earlier this month in Sulaimaniya, in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, three days after touching dead birds infected with the virus, the Iraqi health minister said Monday. Her uncle, who died last week, is also presumed to have succumbed to the disease, although test results are pending.

A serious bird flu outbreak has killed four people and hundreds of thousands of birds in the Kurdish part of neighboring Turkey over the past six weeks. Trade routes, traversed by trucks and mules, crisscross national borders in a large ethnic Kurdish area, which includes portions of several different countries.

I'll hold off on hitting the panic button but can you imagine? As occupiers of Iraq, we are sooo not prepared to tackle that.