Bird flu ruled out in death of Nigerian woman

An old Nigerian woman who died early this moth after developing respiratory problems was not the victim of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, Mohammed Belhocine, country representative of the World Health Organization said on Monday.

"Test on the dead woman was negative, it's confirmed that it was not the H5N1 strain," Belhocine told Xinhua from Nigeria's capital Abuja. "So far, (there are) no confirmed human cases in Nigeria," he added.

Belhocine had said last week the 67-year-old woman had contact with poultry in which H5N1 had been detected in the northern state of Kano.

The representative also said they had not received the test results on two kids in adjacent Kaduna state, who were previously ruled out as bird flu victims by Nigerian health officials after they recovered.

Nigeria is the first country on the African continent to report an outbreak of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus which has claimed at least 92 lives, mostly in Asia, since 1997.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization warned last Wednesday the bird flu continued to spread in Nigeria and could cause "a regional disaster."

On Sunday, the Nigerian Avian Flu Crisis Management Center said in a statement that the disease had spread to two new states, namely the northeastern state of Yobe and the central state of Nasarawa.

This brought to nine the number of locations already identified with the disease in west African country since it first reported the presence of H5N1 on February 8.

The statement also reaffirmed a ban on inter-state movement of poultry, transportation of poultry in passenger vehicles and the intra-state movement of birds outside a 3 km radius, especially in already affected states.

Source: Xinhua