Avian influenza: EU to send expert to Iraq in assessing suspect human cases

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) is to send its senior disease outbreak investigator to Iraq, following the provisional confirmation yesterday that a 15 year old girl who died in Sulaimanaya, Rania, Iraq on 17 January was infected with the H5N1 avian influenza virus. Dr. Denis Coulombier, who heads ECDC's Preparedness and Response Unit, will go to Iraq as part of a joint international team assembled at the request of the WHO. Dr. Coulombier has extensive experience as a field epidemiologist and was formerly Head of the Department of Public Health Information Systems at the National Public Health Surveillance Centre in France. The international team will assist the Iraqi authorities in assessing possible infection routes of the 15 year old girl, and also help assess two other cases that are being investigated as possible human cases of avian influenza. Laboratory tests on samples from the 15 year old girl were carried out by the US Naval Medical Research Unit in Cairo. Samples from the 15 year old girl, as well as samples from the two other human cases under investigation, are being sent to the WHO Reference Laboratory in London for further testing. One of these cases is the girl's 33 year old uncle, who died on 27 January, and the other is a 54 year old woman who has been hospitalised in northern Iraq

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