AZERBAIJAN: Bird flu has killed five young people in Azerbaijan, the World Health Organisation (Who) confirmed yesterday as another suspected human case of the virus was reported in Egypt.
The Who said it was investigating whether some of the Azerbaijan victims could have been infected collecting feathers from dead swans.
It said the human death toll now stood at 103 globally.
It added that two other people in Azerbaijan had tested positive for bird flu.
One of them, a 10-year-old boy, has recovered, while a 15-year- old girl remains in hospital in critical condition.
Four of those who died came from the Salyan region in the southeast of the country, while the fifth victim came from Tarter in the west.
It added that an investigation in Salyan had found some evidence that carcasses of numerous swans, which had been dead for some weeks but not buried, may have been collected by residents as a source of feathers.
Egypt reported its fourth suspected human case over the past week. The Egyptian authorities have said that one of the patients died of bird flu last Friday, but that has not been confirmed by the World Health Organisation.
The flu has been detected in a 17-year-old student whose father ran a poultry farm on the Nile delta and his condition was reported as "stable".
Pakistan became the latest country to confirm bird flu in poultry, saying the virus found in two poultry flocks late last month was the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain.
UN and African officials have been meeting in Gabon in west Africa for a summit on how to combat bird flu on the poorest continent.
Donors had pledged $1.9 billion in January to help developing countries strengthen health and veterinary services and boost global surveillance measures, but David Nabarro, senior UN co- ordinator for avian influenza, said few had paid up so far.
The British government's chief scientific adviser, Prof David King, said the country could escape the bird flu until August or September and then it could be kept out of poultry flocks.
A Department of Agriculture and Food spokesman in Dublin said yesterday that the number of calls to its lo-call line reporting dead birds had dropped to about 20 each day.
The department ran a newspaper advertisement repeating the list of water birds whose deaths should be reported but said single deaths of native Irish birds such as pigeon, crow, rook, finch, thrush, robin, magpie etc, need not be reported.
It said multiple deaths of wild birds of all species, which it defined as three birds of the same species or five of different species found in the same location, should be reported to it. It also urged the public not to leave dead birds lying around and said they should be safely disposed of.The lo-call line is 1890 252 283.