A LARGE consignment of masks, gloves and gowns was on its way from the United States to Iraq last Monday to help the war-torn country fight off an already deadly outbreak of bird flu in Iraqi Kurdistan. "What Iraq needs is lots of personal protection equipment such as masks, gloves, gowns and disinfectants to curb the spread of the disease," said Jon C. Bowersox, health attache with the US embassy in Iraq. "A 900 kilo consignment of this equipment is on its way from the United States to Iraq and will arrive here in the next two days," he told the news agency. Bowersox said the consignment will be distributed not just in Kurdistan where the first case of bird flu in the country has been registered, but across the entire country. "The idea is to prepare Iraq to ward off any widespread threat. The health ministry will distribute the equipment across the country as we have to take precautions," he said. Bowersox, who is working with the Iraqi health ministry to help check the spread of the deadly H5N1 virus, said the issue was not that of shortage of medicines or equipment but of making it quickly available. The World Health Organisation (WHO) said it was dispatching thousands of doses of the anti-influenza drug Tamiflu after reports that there was an acute shortage of the drug. Meanwhile, a two-member team of WHO veterinarians left for Arbil to join the other eight-member team which landed in Kurdistan last Sunday. The two teams will work jointly to probe the spread of the virus which last month claimed its only victim in Iraq. A teenage girl from Kurdistan had died from the H5N1 virus, though initial reports from a WHO laboratory in Amman said that test results for the virus were negative. Tests were still under way in Britain on virus samples from the girl's uncle, who died last week of a pulmonary infection, and from a woman who hails from the same region and remains in hospital. WHO last Sunday warned that the disease could turn into a human emergency, if not tackled on a war-footing. "At the moment this is an agricultural emergency," said Sam Yingst, member of the team that left for Arbil Monday. "But we believe that there is a possibility that it may become a human public emergency though it will require a significant change in the nature of the virus." A massive cull of poultry has been underway in the northern Kurdistan region after the outbreak of the H5N1 strain of the avian influenza virus among birds. Yingst said the tests on the second individual, which are currently underway in Britain, would be the key. "We will come to know from the tests of the second person whether or not the virus has shifted or drifted, but at the moment there is no indication of that because, had it occurred, there would have been more cases," he told reporters. "And if at all it has happened, then this possibility has been elevated by a very significant notch." In the eastern province of Diyala, along the Iranian border, health ministry officials are already spreading disinfectant around poultry producing areas. Authorities in Kurdistan had quarantined 18 people suspected of suffering from bird flu, of which 12 have been released after their health improved, a doctor from Sulaimaniyah told reporters. "Of the six, four are strong suspects of bird flu while the health of the other two has improved," the medic said. Ibtisam Aziz, head of a committee set up to fight the virus, said that the virus was still confined only to Serkikan village in Raniya district of Sulaimaniyah from the girl came from. Turkey, which has had 21 cases of the flu strain, was previously the only country outside Asia to report fatalities from the virus. Four people have died there. The first known cases of H5N1 in humans were recorded in Hong Kong in 1997, when six people died. Since the virus resurfaced in Asia in 2003 there have been 160 confirmed cases, 86 of them fatal.
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