Avian Flu

Pennsylvania researchers have produced a bird flu vaccine made from a genetically engineered human cold virus and shown that it protected 100% of vaccinated mice and chickens. Production of a conventional flu vaccine requires months of work and large numbers of fertilized chicken eggs, but the researchers reported Thursday that they prepared their vaccine in 36 days, growing it in a laboratory dish.

A 14-year-old girl who died in northern Iraq this month had bird flu, Iraq's health minister said. A World Health Organization official said preliminary results from a U.S. military laboratory in Cairo showed the H5N1 bird flu virus, but it was seeking further tests. If confirmed, it would be the first known human case of the virus in Iraq, whose northern provinces border Turkey, where more than 20 people have been diagnosed with the virus.

The World Health Organization confirmed Thursday that an Iraqi teenager who died last month had the H5N1 bird flu virus, and Indonesia's Health Ministry said a teenager there had become that nation's 15th fatality from avian flu. The Iraqi victim was a teenage girl who died Jan. 17 of severe respiratory disease in a Sulaymaniya hospital in northern Iraq.

A Hong Kong laboratory recognized by the World Health Organization has confirmed four more human bird flu cases in Indonesia, including two deaths, a senior Indonesian Health Ministry official said. Hariadi Wibisono, the ministry's director of control of animal-borne diseases, said that raised Indonesia's confirmed human bird flu cases to 23. Although the H5N1 strain of avian flu mostly affects birds, it has infected 161 people and killed 86 of them since 2003, according to the WHO.

The rapidly spreading bird flu virus has been detected for the first time in Africa, infecting chickens at a large commercial farm in Nigeria, the World Organization for Animal Health reported Wednesday. Tests conducted at a laboratory in Italy have confirmed the virus as the H5N1 strain, which has sickened 165 people in Asia and the Middle East, killing 88.

Indonesia reported that two women died of bird flu, and China reported one woman's death from the disease. If the deaths are confirmed by the World Health Organization, they would be Indonesia's 17th and 18th and China's eighth. Elsewhere, Azerbaijan's Health Ministry said a British lab had confirmed the H5N1 strain in wild ducks and swans on the Absheron peninsula, which juts into the Caspian Sea and includes the capital, Baku.

Avian flu has spread to a new country, with Azerbaijan saying Friday that the lethal H5N1 strain had been found in wild birds floating dead on the Caspian Sea. The birds were found near the Apsheron Peninsula, which includes the capital Baku, and off the southern Massali region, near the border with Iran. China and Indonesia also reported Friday two more human deaths from bird flu, which was discovered this week in Nigeria for the first time.

Bird flu has reached Western Europe, with Italy and Greece announcing Saturday that they had detected the H5N1 strain of the virus, which can be deadly to humans, in dead swans. Italian officials said the virus found in five swans in southern Italy had affected only wild birds and posed no immediate risk to people. Greek authorities said health experts were checking poultry on farms and homes in the region where infected swans were found outside Thessaloniki, Greece's second-largest city.

Iran said 135 wild swans died of bird flu in marshlands near the Caspian Sea, and officials in Germany and Austria said the virus appeared to have reached there as well. The disease's apparent spread to three new countries follows the recent deaths of humans from the H5N1 strain of bird flu in Turkey and Iraq, Iran's neighbors, and the march of the disease into European countries Greece and Italy. Bird flu has killed at least 91 people since 2003, according to the World Health Organization.

Responding to fears of a second avian influenza outbreak this year, health officials in the southern Iraqi city of Amarah said Thursday that they had ordered hundreds of chickens slaughtered, cordoned off the town and begun disinfecting vehicles leaving the area. A hospital official in Amarah said that although no human cases of the virus had been discovered, at least two chickens had tested positive.