IRANIAN CLUSTER??? or Staph Pneumonia??

Tests on two dead Iranians show H5N1 bird flu
Tue May 23, 2006 8:13am ET170

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Tests in Iran on the bodies of a brother and sister who died after falling ill with pneumonia-like symptoms showed they had the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu, an Iranian medical official said on Monday.

The two -- a 41-year-old man and 26-year-old woman -- were among five members of the same family who became sick after returning from a trip to the town of Marivan, close to their home in the northwestern city of Kermanshah.

The three surviving relatives were in hospital and one of them remained dangerously ill, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters. It was not clear when the brother and sister died.

Samples have been sent to international laboratories for further tests, and if the initial results are confirmed, these would be the first human bird flu deaths in Iran.

Confirmation of H5N1 could deal a major blow to Iran's poultry industry. The Union of Chicken Meat Farmers says the industry employs 600,000 people directly but as many as 3 million people are dependent on it.

"They had all returned from a trip to the town of Marivan when they fell ill with symptoms of staphylococcal pneumonia," the official told Reuters, adding that the brother and sister had later tested positive for H5N1.

A third family member, aged 30, had slipped into a coma in hospital in Kermanshah, which is 100 km (60 miles) from the Iraqi border in the mountainous Kurdish territories of Iran.

The Islamic Republic first detected cases of bird flu inside the country in February, when the virus was found in wild swans.

All Iranian officials contacted by Reuters said they had been instructed not to speak to the media, adding that only the health minister was authorized to comment. The H5N1 virus remains mainly a virus of birds, but experts fear it could change into a form easily transmitted from person to person and sweep the world, killing millions within weeks or months.

The virus has killed 123 people since late 2003, most of them in Asia, according to the most recent figures from the World Health Organization.

Iran's neighbors Turkey, Iraq and Azerbaijan have all reported deaths from the virus in recent months.

So far, most human cases can be traced to direct or indirect contact with infected birds.

© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.

Iran denies bird flu deaths
Posted: Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Geneva

Iran's health minister has denied that two siblings had died of bird flu, a day after a medical official said they had tested positive for the virus.

If bird flu were confirmed as the cause of death, the cases would be the first human deaths from the virus in Iran, which first detected it in birds in February. It has killed people in Turkey, Iraq and Azerbaijan.

'Fortunately, these two cases were negative for avian flu. There is no confirmed case until now,' Health Minister Kamran Lankarani said on the sidelines of the annual meeting of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Geneva.

Yesterday, an Iranian medical official said the 41-year-old man and his 26-year-old sister from the northwestern city of Kermanshah had tested positive for the H5N1 strain of avian influenza that has killed 123 people around the world.

Iranian officials also said yesterday that they were sending samples for testing to international laboratories, but today the relevant parties had not received them.

In Cairo, the WHO's regional adviser for emerging diseases, Hassan Al Bushra, said the agency had been told the results in Iran were negative for bird flu and that his office had not received any samples from Iran for testing.

The two siblings were among five members of a family who became sick. Surviving relatives were in hospital and one was dangerously ill.

The confusion over the Iranian family comes days after the World Health Organisation confirmed several members of an Indonesian family who died earlier this month were infected with the H5N1 flu virus.