related threads: http://www.curevents.com/vb/showthread.php?t=37107
http://www.curevents.com/vb/showthread.php?p=283307

flu discussion:
http://www.curevents.com/vb/showthread.php?t=37146 

Bird Flu Detected in Northern Iraq
By Anadolu News Agency (aa), Suleymaniye, Cairo
Published: Monday, January 30, 2006
zaman.com

http://www.zaman.com/?bl=hotnews&al...060130&hn=29213

A teenage girl has died of bird flu in Sulaymaniyah, a city in northern Iraq, told Abdelmuttalib Mohammed Ali, the Iraqi Minister of Health.

The 17 year old girl was diagnosed as having the H5N1 virus, forcing her to stay home for about two weeks until she died on January 17 of a lung infection, Ali told reporters.

Her home is located near a lake that is visited by large numbers of migrating birds, Ali added.

Sanjin Abdelkadir died from the H5N1 virus at her home in the Raniyah area, on the Iraq-Turkey border, said the minister after arriving in the area to make contacts with local health officials.

The United Nations confirmed the case.

An anonymous UN official confirmed to reporters about the case of a girl dying from the H5N1 virus earlier this month (January) in northern Iraq.

Samples taken from the teenager were analyzed and tested positive at a US naval base in the Egyptian capital of Cairo, said the UN official. 

haven't we seen mulitple ages for her? I'm sure its the same person, but i'm curious as to which one it is. Also, do we know anything about the other suspect cases? It seems this isnt just infecting children.. so maybe it really was just that children had more dealings w/ fowl in turkey. 

WHO issued an update that said niece was 15, uncle was 39, and unrelated hospitalized (since Jan 18) case was 54F. 

Before the counts get out of hand and obfuscated by the arrival of WHO, is there anyone who would like to take upon themself the special task of just keeping the tally of the Iraq cases as they come in, and remaining the board's 'expert' on the tally for the next week or two? 

I will do Iraq if you like, or work together with anyone else who'd like to do it. 

Okay, Pixie, you're the boss of the Iraq count, then, plus anyone who will assist you so you can have a day off now and again.  

Pixie -

Thanks so much for offering to keep track for Iraq. If you're able to keep tabs on NAMES, too, (I'm sure you're planning to try) that has seemed really important in the past on the off chance that someone starts witholding or modifying information.

Kris (MomCares) 

http://smh.com.au/news/World/Iraq-o...8590462610.html


The Shi'ite festival of Ashura is coming up too. Ashura, the 10th day of the Islamic month of Moharram, commemorates the death of the Shi'ite imams Hassan and Hussein in Karbala in 680 AD at the hands of the Sunni ruler. The link above mostly discusses security, as there was a lot of violence last year and the year before. Tens of thousands of Shi'ites will visit mausoleums of their imams whilst mingling their germs. 

__________________ 

"When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth."
Billy - age 4

stephanie

Yes, MomCares, I'd like to keep track of the following (please anyone add any other pertinent categories you think we should also track):

Name
Age
Home Town/Province
Date of Onset of Symptoms
Symptoms
Status
Date Hospitalized
Where Hospitalized
1st Lab Test Location(s)& Method
1st Diagnosis & Date
2nd Lab Test Location(s) & Method
2nd (or Interim) Diagnosis & Date
Others in Cluster & Relationship
Contact with Poultry (Y/N & to what extent)
Treatment Reported
Final Diagnosis:
Date of Release/Death
Link(s) to significant article(s) mentioning case 

Maybe also date of hospitalization, if possible.

Again - thanks... and I hope your job is really easy because there are only three cases.

Kris (MomCares)

p.s. This might be too hard to do, but it would great to keep track of pointers to all articles where we get information about the cases, so we could easily reference them later. For example, there are already several articles/posts with info about the three cases to-date. I'm not sure how one would keep this info. 

Date hopitalized 

Yes good idea MomCares & Jam. I've edited the list to include that.

I added the link to significant articles mentioning the case too. You're right, this is especially useful if the thread becomes a long daily one.

EDIT AFTER READING GREAT SUGGESTIONS: I'll keep track of rumored cases/clusters and add additional info when they turn into confirmed cases.

I'll also add info on any peculiar occurances with regard to media reports with the cases. Not that we think that would happen...

Thanks Lisa - yes I will try to make the information as detailed as possible and will include anything pertinent that they offer in terms of the kind of information you describe. List has been edited for "Final Diagnosis"

I too wish for the list to stop abrubtly after these three cases. 

pixie--one thing used in hospitals: Initial diagnosis and Final diagnosis.

I hope for status you'll do something like this rather than change the status (details are FICTIONAL, for illustration purposes):

Name--kurdish girl
Age 14
status--pneumonia, suspected bird flu 1/10
--H5N1 preliminary--ruled out 1/12 (Jordan. WHO lab)
--died 1/17, dx. heart failure, pneumonia
--post-mortem tissue sample--H5N1 confirmed 1/29 (Cairo. US Naval Lab) 

I wonder if it would also be worth jotting quick notes about rumors of cases. For example;

Rumored 30 cases being tested, source AP article Jan 30
Rumored 5 cases in Basra, source...

Kris (MomCares) 

I think we need to take this discussion to PMs with Pixie or we'll bog down the thread. Pixie, you are the boss, you make the decisions on what suggestions you think are good ones. If this works out maybe others can follow your example to track other countries. 

Iraqi Teenager's Death of Bird Flu Suggests Rapid Spread

Article Tools Sponsored By
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: January 30, 2006

A 15-year-old girl has died of the bird flu in Iraq, health officials there and abroad said today, a finding that indicates that the virus has arrived in yet another country — one whose ability to control contagion is likely to be hampered by war.

The confirmation of the cause of the girl's death also suggests, officials said, that the disease may be spreading widely — and undetected — among birds in the countries of central Asia, which are poorly equipped to identify and report infections. Avian flu has never been reported in birds in Iraq.

As happened in Turkey earlier this month, the spread of the H5N1 strain of bird flu to a new part of the world became evident only through a human death. That is notable, and alarming to health officials, because bird flu rarely infects humans, and usually does so late in the course of an animal outbreak, after close contact with sick birds.

"We shouldn't be seeing human cases first, and this points to serious gaps in surveillance," a spokeswoman for the World Health Organization, Maria Cheng, said 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 this month in Sulaimaniyah, in the Kurdish region in northern Iraq, three days after touching a dead bird infected with the virus, the Iraqi health minister said today. The girl's 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, traveled by truck and mules, crisscross national borders in a large ethnic Kurdish area, which includes portions of several countries.

Officials at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome warned last week that bird flu had probably already spread from Turkey into neighboring countries — and specifically warned Iran, Iraq, Syria and Armenia to be on high alert. But until today, there was no hard evidence of such movement.

"We encouraged the countries to increase surveillance," said Juan Lubroth, a senior veterinarian at the United Nations food and agriculture agency in Rome. "But I'm not a policeman. What I can do is to ask governments to be more vigilant."

Mr. Lubroth, who is studying the spread of avian influenza, said that monitoring to detect the disease in animals was weak in much of the region and that governments needed to be more transparent — both in acknowledging outbreaks and in admitting when they lacked the capacity or money to detect the disease, which requires complicated laboratory testing.

For example, Dr. Rod Kennard, who is managing a year-old United Nations project to rebuild veterinary services in Iraq, said that the local government in Sulaimaniyah was monitoring commercial poultry flocks, "but they don't really have the ability to monitor what's going on in village flocks."

He said that "it is a really big question" whether a country in the throes of armed conflict could coordinate a response to a complicated problem like bird flu, although he noted that northern provinces were generally "not as troubled" as some of the areas in Central Iraq.

Kurdish authorities quarantined four villages today because of suspicion that birds in the area, and possibly people, might be infected. They said that 150 teams had moved through the areas destroying birds.

To contain bird flu outbreaks, sick birds must be rapidly identified and culled, along with any poultry in a surrounding safety zone. A slow start in Turkey allowed the disease to spread throughout the country, and the government is now struggling to contain 55 outbreaks in 15 provinces.

The Iraqi health minister, Dr. Abdul Mutaleb Mohamed Ali, appealed for help, noting that two other people in distant parts of Iraq had also been tested for bird flu. "We ask the international community to move fast and send our country technical assistance and health equipment," he said today.

At the moment, humans can only contract bird flu through close contact with infected poultry, and about 150 people worldwide have contracted the disease. But scientists worry that the virus may mutate and spread between humans, setting off a worldwide pandemic.

The test on samples from the Iraqi girl were performed at a lab in Cairo this weekend and samples are being sent to the official World Health Organization reference lab in England for confirmation. Because of this, the organization considers the result a "preliminary positive." But in Turkey all "preliminary positives" were all later confirmed.

Over the past few months, there have been occasional reports of large- scale bird deaths in both Iran and northern Iraq, places that veterinary officials had tagged as high risk because they are on bird migration routes. But H5N1 was never implicated.

In October, there were large-scale deaths on commercial farms in northern Iraq, Dr. Kennard said. Birds were tested and "we were told it was negative," he said, "but we're not entirely sure how reliable that is."

In most countries with serious bird flu outbreaks, including Turkey, the military has provided the manpower required to contain them, going door-to-door to find chickens to cull. That is not an option in Iraq.

Also, much of the trade in the region is informal and unregulated, so border control of animals is difficult.

Sabrina Tavernise and Ali Adeeb contributed reporting from Baghdad for this article, and an Iraqi employee of the New York Times contributed from Kirkuk.Iraqi Teenager's Death of Bird Flu Suggests Rapid Spread Iraqi Teenager's Death of Bird Flu Suggests Rapid Spread 

Thanx Pixie. 

__________________ 
Bunnies love me, this I know
'Cause Arubi tells me so.

If one can be sure there have been no cases in Russia, Siberia and the Crimea one might suppose BF has picked up something to add to its arsenal in Turkey or one of the surrounding countries. The outbreak in human cases has followed the death of birds by about 2 months. The question for me is....Is that due to some mutation in Turkey and transfered to humans or is it being carried South by wild birds. If the wild birds are carrying it then we are two months behind human outbreaks. 

These two sections seemed particularly interesting, but I couldn't figure out how to BOLD them above.

Kris (MomCares) 

The above comments leave little doubt that H5N1 has been in Iraq (and the rest of the Middle East) since October. 

Avian influenza – situation in Iraq

30 January 2006

The Ministry of Health in Iraq has confirmed the country’s first case of human infection with the H5N1 avian influenza virus. The case occurred in a 15-year-old girl who died on 17 January following a severe respiratory illness. Her symptoms were compatible with a diagnosis of H5N1 avian influenza.

Preliminary laboratory confirmation was provided by a US Naval Medical Research Unit located in Cairo, Egypt.

The girl’s 39-year-old uncle, who cared for her during her illness, developed symptoms on 24 January and died of a severe respiratory disease on 27 January.

Both patients resided in the town of Raniya near Sulaimaniyah in the northern part of the country, close to the border with Turkey. Poultry deaths were recently reported in their neighbourhood, but H5N1 avian influenza has not yet been confirmed in birds in any part of the country. Poultry samples have been sent for testing at an external laboratory.

A history of exposure to diseased birds has been found for the girl. The uncle’s source of infection is under investigation.

The Ministry of Health has further informed WHO of a third human case of respiratory illness that is under investigation for possible H5N1 infection. The patient is a 54-year-old woman, from the same area, who was hospitalized on 18 January.

Samples from all three patients have been sent to a WHO collaborating laboratory in the United Kingdom for diagnostic confirmation and further analysis.

An international team, including representatives of other UN agencies, is being assembled to assist the Ministry of Health in its investigation of the situation and its planning of an appropriate public health response. WHO staff within Iraq have been directly supporting the government’s operational response, which was launched shortly after the girl’s death.Iraq is the seventh country to report human H5N1 infection in the current outbreak. The first human case occurred in Viet Nam in December 2003.







Employment | Other UN Sites | Search | Suggestions | RSS | Privacy
© World Health Organization 2006. All rights reserved

http://www.who.int/csr/don/2006_01_30a/en/index.html 

I think your living in cloud cuckoo land if you think you will get even 5% of the info that came out of Turkey. 

Well Pixie probably has more than half of that for the first case. Doesn't hurt to have items that are blank and show what is and is not being provided...may tell you something.

And its not China you know  

White phosphorus: British forces have used white phosphorus in Iraq, primarily as a smoke screen to provide cover for troops or for target illumination. British forces “go to great lengths to ensure that civilian and non-combatants are not harmed during operations”, Defence Procurement Minister Lord Drayson said in a written answer.

Avian flu: The MoD has ordered H5N1 vaccine from the Department of Health as part of its preparations for a possible influenza pandemic. Supplies of the vaccine are not currently available. The MoD approach on offering the vaccine is based on the NHS policy of giving it only to specific groups of personnel, such as key workers in Defence Medical Services.

http://216.239.51.104/search?q=cach...s&ct=clnk&cd=10 

Here's my designated stupid question for the day...

Does anyone know exactly where troops, (from whatever countries), as well as civilian contractors are located in Iraq? I'd kneel & bow down to anyone who can produce a map, even... 

__________________ 
Bunnies love me, this I know
'Cause Arubi tells me so.

Military outposts:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/milit...iraq/index.html


General Maps:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/milit...d/iraq/maps.htm

Bowing now necessary. I don't know kneel.

Typo.. that was supposed to be NOT necessary... I need more coffee !!! 

BG - consider yourself bowed to... several times over.

In other words... thanx muchly. 

__________________ 
Bunnies love me, this I know
'Cause Arubi tells me so.

This is the most amazing thread... watching it develop is awesome.

You guys are the best. 

Welcome.

That was a typo on my part.

Was supposed to read bowing NOT necessary.

Too many late conference calls with Asia..  

Ask and you shall receive.

Sage 

So... do we think US troops in Iraq know, or will be told, any of what's going on there?

Kris (MomCares) 

Dam right 

girls name :Shangen Abdul Qader, town Raniya

( http://www.forbes.com/home/feeds/ap.../ap2487457.html )

Update 6: First Bird Flu Death Confirmed in Iraq
By YAHYA BARZANJI , 01.30.2006, 03:46 PM



Battered by rampant violence and political instability, a new threat in Iraq was confirmed Monday - the first case of the deadly bird flu virus in the Middle East.

A 15-year-old Kurdish girl who died this month had the deadly H5N1 strain, Iraq and U.N. health officials said. The discovery prompted a large-scale slaughter of domestic birds in the northern area where the teen died as the World Health Organization formed an emergency team to try to contain the disease's spread.

"We regretfully announce that the first case of bird flu has appeared in Iraq," Iraqi Health Minister Abdel Mutalib Mohammed told reporters. "The results show infection with the deadly H5N1."

World Health Organization officials confirmed the finding, though it was not immediately clear how the girl, Shangen Abdul Qader, who died Jan. 17 in the northern Kurdish town of Raniya, contracted the disease.

The prospect of a bird flu outbreak in Iraq is alarming because the country is gripped by armed insurgency and lacks the resources of other governments in the region. Government institutions, however, are most effective in the Kurdish-run area of the north where the girl lived.

Health teams cordoned off areas in and around Raniya on Monday and began Iraq's first bird slaughter as the government pleaded to the WHO to help prevent a large-scale outbreak.

Policeman Khalil Khudur said he led a team that killed 3,000 birds, mainly chickens and ducks, in Sarkathan, a village of about 600 homes four miles north of Raniya. Villagers and cars were also sprayed with chemicals to kill any trace of the disease.

But there were fears they might be too late.

Health officials are investigating the death of the girl's uncle, Hamasour Mustapha, 50, on Friday after showing symptoms similar to bird flu. At least two other people have been admitted to a hospital in Sulaimaniyah, 160 miles northeast of Baghdad, with similar symptoms. Another 30 samples from northern Iraq are also being tested for bird flu.
WHO is readying an emergency team to carry out epidemiological tests and examine Iraqis exhibiting bird flu-like symptoms, spokesman Dick Thompson said.

President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, met members of an Iraqi committee following up the bird flu outbreak and was briefed on efforts to protect Iraqis from any spread of the disease, according to al-Iraqiya TV which aired footage of the talks.

Abdul Qader and her uncle lived in the same house in Raniya, about 60 miles south of the Turkish border and just 15 miles west of Iran.

Health officials don't yet know how the girl contracted the deadly virus, but just north of Raniya is a reservoir used as a stopover by migratory birds from Turkey, where at least 21 cases of H5N1 have been recorded.

Experts fear the virus could mutate into a form spread easily among humans, triggering a pandemic capable of killing millions. So far, most human cases have been traced to contact with birds.

The preliminary laboratory findings indicating the girl had bird flu were made by the U.S. Navy Medical Research Unit laboratory in Cairo, Egypt. WHO said test samples have been sent to its reference laboratory in Britain for final confirmation, which could take up to two weeks.

"It is always worrying to have a new case in a new country because it raises concerns among the public," Thompson said. "But we have to understand that so far this is just one case."

The girl's mother rejected the bird flu findings, but acknowledged that a number of her chickens had mysteriously died before her daughter's death.

"My daughter did not die from bird flu," Fatima Abdullah, 50, told The Associated Press. "She did not like chickens nor had anything to do with them. She did not take care of these birds."

Health experts said controlling such an outbreak and undertaking a mass bird cull would be difficult due to Iraq's limited veterinary and monitoring infrastructure.

"If an outbreak of avian influenza were to be proven, there would be a lot of support needed," said Maria Zampaglione, spokeswoman at the Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health.

Kurdistan Health Ministry official Najimuldin Hassan said thousands of domesticated birds are expected to be killed, but authorities were not equipped to kill migratory birds.

"We do not know how" to kill them, he said.

Khudur complained that his team was also not properly equipped to safely conduct the slaughter.

"We lack plastic boots, masks and gloves. If we tear the gloves on our hands, there are none to replace them," he said.

A top U.N. official pinpointed the issue - and its financial implications on cash-strapped Iraqi villagers and farmers - as the gravest one facing authorities as they try to stop the disease's spread.

"The problem comes down to funding more than anything else," Rod Kennard, who manages the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization's assistance program for Iraq, said from neighboring Jordan.

"If they have enough money in order to pay people off so that people will not be reluctant to cull their birds, it's less of an issue."

Iraq has some 550 commercial flocks, he said. The sale of birds at open markets, especially in small towns, poses another challenge.

It could take up to three weeks to find out how the virus entered Iraq and how it would be contained, WHO spokesman Thompson said.

"We need to identify the source of this child's exposure," Thompson said. "It has to be in the environment somewhere and we need to identify that before going ahead in assessing control or (bird) elimination efforts." 

Excellent question, MC. My guess is that troops in the field will hear about this from non-gov/non-mil sources first. Meanwhile, the military leadership is likely putting communications plans into effect to warn troops about dead birds, staying away from poultry, etc.

John (a "once upon a time" Army officer) 

__________________ 
"It is always more complicated than we are led to believe - more nuanced if you will." -- Into the Woods

this was from january 19!:
Iraqi villagers burn chickens in Raniya village

1/19/2006 Reuters
Iraqi villagers burn chickens in Raniya village near Sulaimanyia, north of Baghdad January 19, 2006.

Iraqi experts went from village to village in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq on Thursday, searching for signs of the bird flu virus among people and poultry after the death of a teenager from a fever caused alarm.

Iraq was testing for the human strain of the deadly bird flu virus for the first time on Wednesday after a 14-year-old girl died of a fever in the Kurdish region close to the Turkish and Iranian borders.

Health officials said Tijan Abdel-Qader, who died on Tuesday after a two-week illness, lived close to a lake that is a haven for migratory birds flying south from Turkey, where 21 people have been confirmed this month as having the H5N1 virus.

Source: Reuters

http://www.kurdmedia.com/news.asp?id=11162 

 

They don't know.
The information they do get is filtered, as they are too busy to watch MSM.
Only way they will hear about it is via e-mail from family. 

Well... since MSM is still pretty quiet on the subject, and since their family consequently may not become aware, it sounds like we can assume that US troops will be flying blind in Iraq for awhile. I hope none of them are fond of chickens.

Kris (MomCares) 

If I knew any troops over there... I'd have already e mailed them & would continue to do so daily until I was sure they got the message.

I'm not gonna assume they're being told anything about it. 

__________________ 
Bunnies love me, this I know
'Cause Arubi tells me so.