14 DAY TRIAL // Azerbaijan recently reported 3 deaths caused by bird flu, after Myanmar announced the first outbreak in domestic birds. Officials said the three victims got the disease after contact with sick birds and did not infect each other. The women were aged 17, 20, and 21 and were apparently members of a family from the Salyan region in southern Azerbaijan.
The family, like many others, had kept poultry in their house. The youngest woman died on February 23 and the other two victims died this month. Results are awaited for other 2 suspect deaths, including a 16-year-old boy related to the girl. The first tests found the H5 virus, but the exact strain of the virus still remains unknown.
"We are proceeding as if it is H5N1...We are sending an epidemiologist and clinician right away and are looking at possibly a large response," said World Health Organization spokesman Dick Thompson. Results are scheduled to arrive from the laboratory in Britain and WHO confirmed this week the death of an Indonesian girl from the H5N1 virus.
Also, eight people suspected of having contracted the virus are being treated at a Jakarta hospital. Myanmar became the 26th to report an initial outbreak in birds, officials considering it a risk area in the global fight against the disease.
Cameroon is the fourth African country to report an outbreak of H5N1 after the virus was confirmed in 50 ducks on a farm near the northern town of Maroua. Gabon, which borders Cameroon to the north, Ethiopia, Gambia and Sierra Leone are also thought to have bird flu outbreaks.