Second bird flu fatality eyed in Iraq
(AP)
Updated: 2006-02-17 09:59

The dead uncle of an Iraqi girl who died last month after contracting the deadly bird flu virus also had the disease, US and UN officials said Thursday, citing test results at a UN-certified laboratory in Egypt.

One further test must be carried out by a London laboratory certified by the World Health Organization before the United Nations confirms that the uncle did in fact have the H5N1 bird flu virus.

The body of a buzzard believed to have died after eating carrion of a wild swan, at the Anzali marshlands, where the H5N1 strain of bird flu has killed 135 wild swans on the Iranian part of the Caspian Sea coast, 219 miles (365 kilometers) northwest of the capital Tehran, Iran, Thursday, Feb. 16, 2006. An alarming development in a region where the deadly strain of the disease has killed humans in neighbors Turkey and Iraq.  [AP]

In Europe, German and Slovenian officials confirmed their first cases of bird flu. Countries from Liechtenstein to Romania ordered poultry indoors or quarantined villages to stem the spread of the disease.

A European Union panel called for a 6.5-mile quarantine and surveillance zone around suspected or confirmed outbreaks of bird flu.

The Iraqi man died Jan. 27 in northern Kurdistan and lived in the same house as his 15-year-old niece, the country's first confirmed bird flu-related death. They died 10 days apart.

A U.S. official said the uncle's samples came back positive from Cairo for H5N1. The official declined to be identified further because he was not authorized to release the information to the media.

An official from the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization office confirmed that the sample from the uncle had tested positive for H5N1 when analyzed by the U.S. Navy Medical Research Unit laboratory in Cairo.

To date there have been no confirmed cases that H5N1 has mutated into a virus capable of being passed directly between humans. Experts fear such a development could lead to a global pandemic.

The H5N1 strain has killed 91 people since 2003, with most victims infected directly by sick birds, according to the World Health Organization.

Germany's leading animal health institute verified suspicions that two dead swans found Tuesday on the Baltic Sea island of Ruegen were infected with H5N1, the government-run Friedrich Loeffler Institute said in a statement.

Slovenia confirmed that a swan found dead in the north near the Austrian border carried the deadly virus strain.

As the number of cases mounted, European authorities pushed ahead with measures to boost defenses against the disease and prevent a large outbreak when migratory birds begin traveling north next month.

"We are dealing with a dangerous animal epidemic that could also be potentially harmful to people," Agriculture Minister Horst Seehofer told the German parliament in Berlin. "Protection of our people is our first priority."

Officials said citizens were safe as long as they did not touch sick or dead birds. Bird keepers at zoos across Germany began chasing down their pheasants, peacocks and other wild birds to keep them caged during the coming months.

In neighboring Denmark, authorities began testing 35 dead birds found on Danish islands just north of the German border.

Liechtenstein and Austria — where three swans have tested positive for H5N1 — followed initiatives in France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Switzerland and Sweden and ordered domestic fowl kept indoors to avoid contact with wild birds.

Authorities questioned how the virus reached Europe.

"The reasons for the nearly simultaneous appearance of the H5N1 virus in wild birds in Italy, Slovenia, Austria and Germany continues to be a mystery," said Thomas Mettenleiter, president of the Friedrich Loeffler Institute. "It is possible that the swans came in from eastern Europe."

Russia confirmed H5N1 in southern Dagestan, where about 350,000 birds were found dead at poultry farms about two weeks ago.