Three dead in Azerbaijan from bird flu

According to government health officials in Azerbaijan, three people have died from bird flu there. They are the country's first known cases of the virus in humans.

Deputy Health Minister Abbas Velibeyov has reportedly said the three deaths, which occurred earlier this month, were diagnosed using equipment imported from Egypt and approved by the World Health Organisation (WHO) .

The three infected people were apparently members of a family from the Salyan region in southern Azerbaijan.

The family, like many others in the rural region, had kept poultry in their house.

The WHO reports that two H5N1 outbreaks last month were in poultry on farms in Khyzy, in the northeastern part of the country, and Bilasuvar in eastern Azerbaijan.

The virus is also reported to have sickened birds in neighboring Iran, Georgia and Russia.

Azerbaijan is also a neighbour of eastern Turkey, which has had several human deaths from bird flu

As yet the results of tests on samples from Azerbaijan sent to a WHO approved laboratory in Britain are still pending.

Doctors and medical equipment are being sent in after house- to-house searches for avian flu found at least three possible human cases, says the WHO.

The WHO says confirmation this week that an Indonesian girl had died from the virus takes the death total there to 22, and the total worldwide to 98 people since late 2003.

The 12 year old's death followed her 10 year old brother's death on the previous day, from what was thought to be dengue haemorrhagic fever, a mosquito-borne virus.

In that case also bird flu had been found in chickens in the children's home.

Eight people suspected of having contracted the virus are apparently being treated at a Jakarta hospital.

To date the disease remains a predominantly bird one and human victims of H5N1 contract the virus through direct contact with infected birds.

Experts have long feared the virus could eventually mutate into a form that can be easily transmitted from person to person, sparking a pandemic that could kill millions and cripple the world economy.

H5N1 has spread deep into Europe in a matter of weeks; it has gained a grip in Africa and flared up again in Asia.

Myanmar (Burma) has reported what is believed to be the closeted country's first case; according to Myanmar's Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries, an outbreak in poultry in the township of Aung Myae Thar Zan, in the Mandalay administrative division killed 112 fowl, and a further 668 poultry were culled to prevent the spread of the virus.

Although U.N. officials in Yangon say the authorities are co-operating, military-ruled Myanmar is seen by many international health experts as a risk area in the global fight against the disease.

The government of embattled Afghanistan and the United Nations say a bird flu virus has been found in a small number of poultry and it is highly likely it is the deadly H5N1 strain.

The impoverished country became the 26th to report an initial outbreak in birds, doubling the number of affected nations worldwide since H5N1 was first isolated in a goose in southern China almost a decade ago.

Cameroon is the fourth African country to report an outbreak of H5N1 after the virus was confirmed as the killer of 50 ducks on a farm near the northern town of Maroua.

Wild birds are thought to be the most likely carriers of the strain to Cameroon, according to the country's livestock minister.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta says the spreading H5N1 strain in birds increases the risk of human infection and creates more opportunity for the virus to mutate into a pandemic form capable of killing millions of people.

So far, there has been no human bird flu case in Africa, but health officials fear its spread in birds across the continent, where millions live in close contact with poultry, increases the chances of it mutating to become transmissible between humans.

The number of new outbreaks in poultry reported to the World Organization for Animal Health reached more than 60 in the week ending March 9, boosted by more infections on farms in Nigeria and Romania.

Experts are also concerned that the world's poorest continent, already battling HIV/AIDS and malaria, is ill-equipped to combat the new health threat.

Suspected poultry outbreaks in Gabon, which borders Cameroon to the north, Ethiopia, Gambia and Sierra Leone are also under investigation.

German authorities said on Monday a suspected outbreak in a Bavarian poultry farm had turned out to be a false alarm, after dead ducks tested negative for H5N1.