BIRD flu has killed five young people in Azerbaijan, taking the global toll from the disease to more than 100, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said today.
Confirmation of the deaths in Azerbaijan, which lies at the crossroads between Europe and Asia, takes the WHO toll from the virus to 103 since it reemerged in late 2003.
Fears are growing the H5N1 flu virus will mutate and pass easily from one person to another but for the moment it remains hard for people to catch it from infected birds.
"We don't see any human-to-human transmission (in Azerbaijan). The exact source of exposure to the deadly virus is under investigation, which is focusing on defeathering of birds," WHO spokesman D_ick Thompson said.
Four of those who died came from a settlement of around 800 homes in the Salyan region in the south-east of the country. Three were related and the fourth was a close friend of the family. The fifth victim came from Tarter in the west.
The WHO said an investigation in Salyan had found some evidence that carcasses of swans, dead for some weeks, may have been collected by residents for their feathers.
Adolescent women and young girls usually pluck birds in the affected community, the WHO said. The feathers are used in pillows.
Four of those who died were young women aged between 17 and 21, while the other was a 16-year-old boy.
Egypt reported a fourth suspected case of bird flu in humans today, in a 17-year-old boy whose father had an outbreak of the disease on his chicken farm in the Nile Delta.
UN and African officials were meeting in Gabon in West Africa for a summit on how to combat bird flu on the poorest continent.
In Pakistan, Livestock Commissioner Muhammad Afzal said there had been no other cases of bird flu since the outbreak was first reported on February 27 at farms in the North West Frontier Province.
Samples from two farms were sent to a laboratory in Britain, and the flocks - about 23,000 birds - were culled.
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